


Catching Fireflies (Spider-Man!AU)

by gooberzayn



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-14
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2017-12-26 12:20:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooberzayn/pseuds/gooberzayn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn is bitten by a spider. Heroic antics ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Keni, and Sahana for proofreading and to Lora for making me even do this!

Zayn looked over from his easel at the curly-haired boy badly painting an apple a few feet in front of him. _We can’t all be good at art, I suppose._  he thought to himself and smiled.

 

“Zayn, man, eyes on your easel.” A voice said from beside him, he turned to his left to look at his friend Niall giving him a smirk, and then he turned back to his work to find that he’d begun painting red brush strokes the same pattern as the boy’s hair all over his paper. His face dropped.

“Mr. Hally’s gonna get on your ass for that.”

“He’s not going to know.” Zayn replied, and started to paint over it in deep concentration for a moment. When Niall looked back over to Zayn’s easel he’d not only painted an apple, but an entire bowl of them.

“There’s only one apple in front of us, how’d you even do that?”

“Some of us are born rich, and some of us are born good at art. You got the former, and I get stuck with knowing how to paint a bowl of apples from memory.”

Niall shrugged,  “At least you won’t be turning this in.” He gestured toward his own easel, which was filled with random red and green brush strokes of some sort.

“Jesus, Niall, you’re just painting an apple, not a crime scene.”

“My hand can’t get proper control of the brush... it’s weird!”

“You just have to practice a bit more. You’ll be fine by the end of term.”

Niall shrugged and went back to trying to paint, twisting his face up in confusion as he made quick strokes.

 

Mr. Hally began to make his way around the classroom before the period ended, and when he landed on Niall, his face looked more confused than Niall’s was.

“A for effort, Mr. Horan. D for execution.” Niall grunted as Mr. Hally moved next to him to view Zayn’s work.

“Ah, Mr. Malik. Wonderful work here. Extra points for doing an entire bowl instead of just one. Perhaps you could give your friend Niall some pointers?”

“I’ll... try my best.” Zayn replied with a meek smile, and the bell rang.

“Alright, everyone who was not graded, hand their work in on my desk. Everyone else can take theirs home and throw it away like regular High School students. You’re dismissed.”

 

Zayn and Niall packed their bags and headed down the hall, side-by-side to head to free period.

“A ‘D’ on an art project. I’m officially the biggest idiot in the universe.”

“I like to think you ran a good race, but only managed to come in a close second for that contest.”

“Some best friend you are.”

“Well, I do my best.” Zayn smiled as Niall lightly shoved him and they settled down into their seats at their table.

“How was art, lads?” said a voice behind them, quickly followed by a small boy rounding the table and sitting down across from them.

“Hey, Lou. Zayn got extra credit on his painting.”

“Really? Were you overcompensating from painting Harry again?”

“He’s done that before?” Niall asked.

“Here it comes...” Zayn groaned

“Sophomore year he and I were doing an art project together-” Louis started

“Meaning I was doing the art project alone.” Zayn interjected

 

“It’s rude to interrupt stories, Zayn.” and Louis continued “We were outside in his backyard and you know Harry’s got the fixation with becoming a model? Well, he was having himself a mini photoshoot outside in his backyard, right next door to Zayn’s place. Needless to say there were brown curls all over our paper. Mind you, he was meant to be painting a dog... just one dog; our project was to pick an animal and artistically recreate it together. I’d brought my dog Molly over as reference. He ended up painting a family of chocolate colored poodles and we got 5 points extra credit for putting in more effort. Funny thing is, Molly isn’t even a poodle, she’s a collie!”

 

“And Louis still hasn’t let it go two years later.”

“And I was amazed that you’d painted a bowl of apples...” Niall said

“Freshman art was the only art class I hadn’t taken. I skipped it my freshman year, and I couldn’t do senior year without taking an art class.”

“So, you’re just gonna coast through while poor old blokes like me struggle.”  
“It’s not like any other subjects are particularly hard for him, either. Science genius, math genius, art prodigy, your gifts are annoying, really.” Louis said, pointedly 

“If it helps I’m only average at Spanish.”  
“Who cares you can already speak Urdu.” Louis retorted.

 

Zayn shrugged. “Well, with all my perfection I can still only barely talk to Harry so I can’t be that great, can I?”

“Oh, Zayn.” Niall answered. “It’s our senior year! Amazing things could happen! Just give it some time.”

“Yea, well. Seventeen years time is long enough for me to give up, I think. Anyway, I’ve got to go. Work at the restaurant, and all.”

“Got it, and Zayn we’re still on for studying this weekend, right? I’ve got an exam in chemistry that’s going to kill me without your help.”  
“Yea, I’ve got nothing better to do, and you guys are both going on the field trip to the BioCenter tomorrow, right?”

“The one for Ms. Thomas’ class? I’m going. I haven’t been there since it opened and mum’s been itching to get me to go. ” Niall answered

“I’m going, too. Can’t have you geeking out over science without having me there to make fun of you, right?”

“Sure, Louis. See you guys later.”

 

Zayn left the table to head to the bus stop for home. His family’s restaurant was just around the corner from their house. When he entered, he was greeted by his mum with a kiss on the cheek. “Glad, you’re here, hun. I need you to work section six. Waliyha hasn’t gotten back from school yet; she’s got a late class today.”

“‘s fine, mum.” He replied as he set his book bag down in the closet in the back, washed his hands, and tied an apron around his waist.

  


When the day was done, Zayn settled down into his room, to focus on his trigonometry homework.

 

The next day Zayn stumbled off of the school bus into the BioCenter following in Niall’s footsteps while Louis lightly pushed him along. The building itself was huge inside, and had everything divided into certain sections that their guide explained to them while Zayn was entirely too busy staring in wonder to pay attention to what she was saying.

 

“We are officially in your natural habitat, Zayn. How does it feel to be home?”

“Louis, are you ever gonna stop with this?”

“I’m serious. I bet this is the only place you could navigate correctly without having your glasses on. Including your own room!”

 

And Louis reached over to Zayn and swiped his glasses off of his face.

“Oh, c’mon, Louis. You know I can’t see shit without my glasses. Now everything’s just fuzzy blobs.”

“I believe in you, Zayn. Follow the sound of my voice and retrieve your glasses.”

“Louis! Lay off.” Niall said, a snicker in his voice.

“Is this not our best friend? Have we not known him since primary school? I think I know him well enough to know that this is where he belongs.”

“Lou!” Zayn said, and began to slowly stumble around to find him. “I can’t even tell your face from Niall-”

 

“Watch it!” and he felt his body crash into someone’s. The voice was familiar, and harsh. Zayn stumbled back a bit.

“Sorry, Liam. I can’t really-.” Zayn squinted at who he assumed was Liam Payne.

“Liam. I took his glasses, he can’t see for shit.” Louis returned Zayn’s glasses to his face.

“That’s not really my problem, is it? How would you like it if I just shoved you” and he did, lightly. “Huh?” again, he shoved him harder this time “Huh, Malik?” Zayn backed up.

“Liam. Calm down it was an accident.” said Harry from behind them. He grabbed Liam’s arm, and pulled him away “Let’s go. The guide said we can split up into groups on our own as long as we don’t go into any restricted areas.”

Liam turned to look a Zayn for a moment. “Yea, sure. Whatever.” and then walked off with Harry.

 

“You’re an asshole, Lou.”

“Yea, but look.” Louis gestured off towards Harry who was staring at Zayn. He held his eyebrows up expectantly at him, and Zayn offered him a tiny nod, to which Harry smiled in response, and tugged Liam off even further.

“I got you a concerned stare and a smile. You should thank me.”

“I don’t think it counts if it’s pity, Lou.” Niall said, and all three of them walked off to explore the deeper points of the BioCenter.

“Niall, I think you’re reading the map wrong. We’re supposed to be in the cloning station, not the cell reconstruction station.” Zayn said as he looked inquisitively at an exhibit labelled “How Cell Reconstruction Works”.

“You’re enjoying it either way” Louis said.

“I mean you’ve got to admit that cell reconstruction is pretty cool. If you can repair damaged cells then you can repair different parts of the body; tissue, organs. That’s wicked you can save lives.”

“Not if you’re drooling all over your scientific processes.”

Zayn sighed “Do you have to ruin everything, Lou?”

“If he didn’t nothing would be  fun.” Niall said, his eyes scrunched in concentration at the map in front of him. “I think if we go this way we’ll get to animal cells?” He pointed to his left 

"Niall, I'd think you'd be better at this since your parents own the place." Louis added  
"It's only funny when you make fun of Zayn." Niall said, still squinting at the map.

 

“Well, seeing as there’s no one around” Louis took some time to look around them “Zayn find us!” he yelled, swiping Zayn’s glasses off of his face again and sprinting off.

“Louis!”

“Don’t worry, Zayn. Just grab onto my shoulder I’ll walk you there.” Niall said.

“Thanks, Niall.”he answered and placed his hand on Niall’s shoulder, walking carefully to avoid stepping over his feet.

“There’s a step here.” Niall said, and Zayn placed his foot  to step upward, but it was actually a declining stair, and he tripped over his foot and bumped into a large tube.

“You okay, mate?” Niall asked.

 

“Yea, it was just a trip nothing- ow!” he felt a stabbing pain in his free hand, and shook it, then brought it close to his face

“What?”

“Nothing I... I think something just bit me?” he made out a small incision on his hand. “We should find Louis so that I can see clearly.”

“Someone call for me?” Louis said, carefully putting Zayn’s glasses back on his face “How was your temporary blindness?”

“Not great. I think something bit me.” He said, peering at his hand.

“What was it?”

“Not sure _couldn’t see it._ ” He looked back up at the tube he’d bumped into, and read its description outloud “Genetically engineered spiders?”

Niall continued after him “Used for research in skill development. Not tested on people, though. See, I do know a bit about what's going on here. You think that’s what bit you?”

Zayn thought for a while “Um, no.” and pulled his sleeve down over his hand “can’t even see a bite mark actually I probably just pinched my skin or something... let’s go.”

“Alright, we’re almost  by the animal cell section, anyway.” Nialls said

 

 

About two hours before the end of the tour, Niall noticed that Zayn looked ill.

“Zayn, why are you sweating so much?”

“I don’t really know. I am feeling a bit feverish, though.”

“Maybe you should take off your jacket, then.” Louis said, his face concerned.

“Nah, cause like my arms feel kind of cold?”

“Zayn, I think you need to call for home.” Niall said, walking him over to sit him down on a bench.

“Can’t. Mum’s working the morning shift at the restaurant. Dad’s out of town on business. Waliyha’s got class.”

“I’ll call my car for you if you want.”

“Um, okay. Thanks, Niall.”

“No problem. I’ll go tell Ms. Thomas that you’re going home.”

“Got it.”

“Zayn, do you think this has something to do with your hand?” Louis asked, patting his back.

“Nah. I told you I couldn’t find a bite mark and spiders leave incisions on skin... It was probably something I ate here. Food’s probably so processed for the scientists that my body just didn’t react well to it.”

 

He lied.

“I probably just need a nap.”

“Okay, just be safe.”

“I’m okay.” he offered Louis a weak smile. “Just a little warm... and cold, too.”

“George is on his way should be here in about five minutes. Ms. Thomas knows you’re going home. I called your mum for her and put her on speaker and everything. She says if you forget your key remember the spare is-”

“Under the mat. Right. Got it.”

  
George, Niall’s extremely nice driver came to take Zayn home, and even offered to walk him up to his porch, which Zayn politely declined. He got into the house and stumbled up to his room. He felt cold, and feverish, and hungry, but also like he might spew, and he felt like he was concentrating on some small things, but his mind was racing. The only feeling that he felt that was overwhelmingly clear was tired, tired, tired, and he closed and locked his door behind him before collapsing onto his floor and falling asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Zayn woke up to a loud banging on his door, and on top of a pile of his own clothes.

“Zayn? Is everything alright, love? I’m starting to get worried. You’ve got school soon!” he heard from outside his door. It took him awhile to register whose voice it was.

“Yea, mum…” he tried to push himself up to stand, but got light-headed and quickly sat himself back down, taking a deep breath before continuing “I’m fine. I’ll be down in a minute. What time is it?”

“Glad to hear your voice! It’s 7:30. Open up so I can see you!”

He took another deep breath before slowly standing up, and walking over to open the door.

“There’s that gorgeous face! Now…” she felt his face with the back of her hand “you’re still kind of warm, sweetie… and you don’t look too good, either.”

He turned to his right to view himself in his mirror, but he couldn’t; everything was blurry. He figured he must’ve taken his glasses off at some point last night.

“You’re gonna have to stay home for just one more day, alright? Just so that I can make sure you’re okay.”

“Mum, I’m fi-”  
“No, no! It’s just one day I promise. I’ll bring you some soup from the restaurant every few hours, and you can sit in bed and rest.”

“I’ll be bored all day, and I feel perfectly fine save me feeling a little light-headed from standing up too quickly.”

“Well, we’ll take it as a day for me to just mother you, alright? That way you can feel completely guilt-free about missing school. Now, back in bed. I’ll bring you some breakfast in a bit.”

“Okay.” and he walked back across his room into his bed, pulling his laptop onto his legs to surf the net while he was waiting. He realized that he still couldn’t see anything. So, he began to search around his room for his glasses.

 _Well, since they’re not on the dresser they must be in the pile of clothes I was sleeping on._  He thought to himself, and got out of bed to feel around the floor for his glasses.

After a while of searching with no luck, his mother came back upstairs with a tray of food.

“Zayn, what are you doing? You’re supposed to be in bed.”  
“I know, mum, but I can’t find my glasses. I figured they must be somewhere on the floor.”

“Zayn, you’re wearing your glasses. You may be sicker than I thought.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“What?”  
“They’re on your face, sweetie.” and she sat the tray down on his dresser to reach at his face, and pull them off. “See?”

Zayn looked over at himself in the mirror again, and could see his face clearly. He did look sick, but he also noticed that his body had expanded a bit.

“Wait, what?” he said aloud, staring at himself in the mirror.

“Your glasses, sweetie, here.” and she placed them back on his face, and his vision blurred again.  
“What?”

“…Zayn, love, get back into bed. You’re speaking gibberish. You need to sleep more.” and she pushed him back into bed, handed him the tray of food, and left his room. He listened for her to leave the house before he got back out of bed and stood in front of his mirror, removing his glasses from his face, and watching his vision become clear.

Then, he put them back on, and everything got all blurry again, and then took them off once more, and everything was clear. _What the fuck is this?_ he thought. He looked at himself in the mirror. His face looked tired, and his body looked wrung out, like it’d rather he be sitting down. However, his pecs were more defined, along with his biceps, he looked like he’d gained a solid 10 pounds of muscle all over his body.

“No way.” he said aloud, and sifted through the pile of clothes on the floor to find his phone. He looked at it and noticed he had about a dozen texts, some from Niall, some from Louis, and a few from his older sister, he exited out of them, and went to his camera.

He angled his phone out in front of him, and snapped a picture, then pulled the phone back up to his face to look at it.

“I could probably take a million different pictures and everyone would still think it’s just an ace photoshop job.” He shook his head, taking one more picture, and going back to his bed to lay down.

He pulled his laptop back over him, and then pulled his hand up to his face, the tiny bite mark made by the spider hadn’t healed yet, and had in fact created a small, raised bump over his hand. Not noticeable, but still visible to him. _Genetically engineered spiders_ he said to himself, then pulled his laptop closer and pulled out his phone to text Niall.

-Not coming to school today. The biocenter is owned by Horan INT right?-

-Rank. Hope you feel better tomorrow nd yea but dont tell my mum I didnt know anything or she’ll lecture me on biology-

-I think I will. Mum just wants me home to be sure and thanks!-

-No problem-

Zayn went back to his laptop and googled Genetically Engineered Spiders Horan INT only to find that there was no page on the biocenter website that gave him much information on them. He then went into the news section, but only found articles about the biocenter being opened. However, he did find luck in the Google Scholar section.

 _Science nerds; always want their information out there but don’t want the lowly general public to find out about it_  he thought and clicked on the first article. It said something about the testing of engineering spiders to have venom that is not poisonous to humans, but that wasn’t what he was looking for. Another article talked about giving spiders different capabilities. Some camouflage, some stronger webs, some made faster, some slower, some bigger, but that wasn’t what he was looking for either.

Though all of the articles he sifted through had ties to Horan INT, none of them seemed to actually give an explanation for his bite until he clicked on one article that talked about a study of transferring genetics across species. The article didn’t talk about spiders, though. It talked about experimentally injecting a species with enzymes that awakened certain potential within animal DNA, and when Zayn read this, he backtracked through all of the spider articles he’d read and opened them in separate tabs. They were all parsed points that held pieces; giving spiders certain capabilities, making them nonvenomous, making them smarter, building a spider from scratch using a few leftover parts and some active DNA to recreate a living spider along with a few other articles relating the strength and intelligence and usefulness of spiders in comparison to ants, beetles, bees, and even dragonflies (which Zayn thought made no sense as dragonflies were pretty harmless anyway) and then injecting a species with certain enzymes. Zayn read them over, and over again until he came to one conclusion; the spider that bit him had been created by Horan INT to give some animal, probably humans, some sort of spider powers.

“‘That’s so daft. That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard of.” He said. “Why would anyone want spider powers?” He sighed and looked at his hand again “I certainly don’t…”

He thought for a moment, trying to soak in this information, but he still couldn’t understand it.

“WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT SPIDER POWERS?” He yelled, throwing his arms up in frustration.

He pulled his laptop back up to him and Googled Horan INT. _I must be missing something_ he thought.

He clicked on their website which read HORAN INTERNATIONAL. LEADING THE WORLD IN SCIENTIFIC INNOVATION.

It had nothing about spiders, and no explanation as to why they’d be interested in spiders. Only articles referring to the achievements at Horan INT and how Niall’s parents had both contributed so much to the worlds of science and medicine were shown as well as some pictures of their various BioCenters over the world and their different bases of research.

"Why is it that scientists always feel the need to just do things for absolutely no reason?"

He bookmarked the tabs with the articles, and then exited out of his browser, turning on some cartoons and reaching over to eat his, now cold, breakfast, and falling asleep once again.

When he woke up for a second time he noticed another empty tray of food, that he didn’t really remember eating, and a knock on his door.

“Umm, Zayn it’s Harry… I was just bringing some notes from today.”

Zayn jumped up, startled, and found himself falling out of bed, but catching himself right at the last moment, perfectly on his tiptoes.

“Yea… give me a minute.” and then he said to himself _I thought cats landed on their feet, not spiders._

“Your mum said you might be sleeping… Sorry if I woke you.”

“It’s no problem, Harry, just give me a minute.”

He moved his clothes into a pile so that they weren’t so scattered everywhere and opened the door.

“Hey, Harry.”

“Hey, Zayn. Mind if I come in?”

“Uh.. sure.” and he opened the door a little more and Harry walked in and sat down on his bed, followed by Zayn awkwardly sitting himself down next to him.

“I feel like I haven’t been in here since like 5th grade.”

“It may have been that long, actually.”

“Are you feeling any better?”  
“Yea, I am. I was tired earlier, but I’m fine now.”

Zayn reached over and grabbed the piece of paper that Harry was holding in his hands, looking it over.

“I take it this is the homework? Niall wrote this I can tell by his handwriting.”

Harry smiled at him, though, Zayn didn’t see it

“Yea. None for art, though.”

“Well, Mr. Hally’s more of an in-class type teacher, anyway. Speaking of, how’re you doing in that class?”

“Definitely not as good as you that’s for sure.”

Zayn let out a little laugh “Ah well, you’re good at other things.”

“Like what?” and Zayn looked up at him, caught slightly off guard.  _Like being fucking beautiful that’s what,_ he thought.

“Like… modelling. Not all of us are as photogenic as you are.”

“Oh, really. Why don’t I be the model and you be the artist.” and Harry splayed himself out over Zayn’s bed “draw me like one of your french girls, Zayn.” and he and Zayn laughed.

“Yea, I’ll get right on that.” Zayn said between his chuckles.

“Seriously, though, Zayn, we should hang out more. I feel like I haven’t had an actual conversation with you in years and I live right next door.”

“Well, you know, school and friends and stuff got in the way I guess, but I’m down to hang out whenever you’re up for it, Harry.”

“Cool.” and Harry’s phone buzzed, he took it out of his pocket to check it “That’s Liam. I’ve got a gig tonight in Soho. Wish me luck!”

“Break a leg.” and Harry got up from the bed and walked out of the room, but ran back to the door to say,

“And you’d be great at modelling, too. You’ve got excellent cheekbones!” and left.

Zayn all but imploded from smiling so much.

 

 

“He said you’ve got _excellent cheekbones_?” Niall said to him the next day in school.

“Yep! Those were his exact words.” Zayn repeated, smiling.

“Well, it obviously means that he wants to have sex with you.” Louis said as they walked down the hallway to homeroom.

“Such a romantic, Louis” Niall said to him.

“Oh, always.” Louis replied

As they rounded the corner to get to homeroom, Zayn began to feel an intense tingling in the back of his mind.  _What is that?_  He thought to himself, and turned around to see Liam all but charging at him, he did a full stop in the middle of the hallway, turning around to face Liam, eyes widened.

“Look who’s back.”

“What’s this about, Liam?” Zayn asked, dryly.

“I don’t think I really need a reason to say hi to my favorite nerd, do I?”  Zayn sighed.

“Your massive inferiority complex is starting to get old. It’s senior year you should really knock it off.” and began to walk away.

“But, Zayn, I didn’t get to say hi.”Liam said, and began to follow Zayn, prodding him in the shoulder with his index finger.

“Liam, knock it off.” Zayn said, annoyed.

“I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about I only wanted to say hi.” Liam responded, poking Zayn even harder.

“Liam.” Zayn said once more, his tone was firm.

Liam laughed “You’re gonna pretend like your little scary voice can actually stop me, Malik?”

Liam reached forward to push Zayn this time, but Zayn caught his hand, and began to squeeze it. He turned around to face Liam, then quickly swung him hard into the lockers on his left side, leaving Liam falling to the floor with what seemed to be a dislocated right arm.

It happened so quickly that Zayn wasn’t even sure he’d actually done it. He looked around the hallway to see if anyone else had helped him do it only to find that everyone was either staring at him or Liam who was now making pained noises on the floor.

“Zayn, what the fuck, man? You go away for one day and you’re fucking Superman?” Niall exclaimed.

“I… I dunno. Did I really do that?”

“Yea, mate. You did.” Louis said

He stood there for a moment, confused, and amazed, and kind of happy until he heard

“Mr. Zayn Malik please report to the principal’s office.” over the PA system and his face dropped. He groaned and angrily stomped off to the principal’s office.

When he got there, he heard the school nurse on the phone with a medic. So, he figured he probably did dislocate Liam’s arm. He stepped a little further in and noticed the principal’s son, Jaime, a sophomore, leaving out of the office with a pained expression on his face, and then the principal, Ms. Reyes, came out and gestured for him to come in.

“Now, Mr. Malik, I’ve got on record that you’ve severely injured another student.”  
“It was an accident, I swear! I don’t know how it happened, really.”

“Regardless of that I now have a soccer captain with a dislocated arm and maybe even a broken hand.”

“Liam shoves me into lockers all of the time, and he never gets called into the principal’s office.”

“Yes, but Liam never causes any extensive injury.”

“Psychological damage can easily match physical, and most times it even surpasses it in how it affects someone.”

“Zayn, the grounds for this, at the very least, would be suspension.”

Zayn let out a heavy sigh.. “You do realize you’re doing nothing but upholding the status quo of jocks always winning over nerds, right? If this were a movie everyone would hate you.”

she smiled at him 

“However, given your record of being an excellent student both academically and socially, I’m just going to send you home early.”

Zayn perked up a bit “Really?”

“Yes... Just don’t cause anymore of my students any bodily harm, or I will have to either suspend or expel you.”

“Fine, Got it. No more bodily harm I promise.”

“No, psychological harm, either, Mr. Malik.”

“Right.”

“I’ve called your mother, she’s on her way to get you.”

After a small car ride home of being lectured on not using your fists, but your words, Zayn settled back into his room. It was the third day in a row he’d either missed all or a partial day in school, and he wasn’t fond of it, but now that he’d seen how strong he was, he wasn’t really complaining. He opened up his laptop and began to look up the strength of spiders only to discover his findings were all over the place. Some needed specific spiders, some only talked about spiders' silk, and one source said that they’re 1000 times as strong as humans, which he didn’t exactly believe to be true. The only thing he knew for certain was that he was stronger, much stronger. So strong that he probably didn’t even know how strong he was. And, of course, in the name of science he had to test it.

He closed and locked his bedroom door before stretching, and going to first, lift his mattress. It felt much lighter than usual, but _It’s only a mattress_ he thought to himself and carefully set it back down onto the bed frame. He then bent down to the legs of his bed, and slowly lifted up the entire bed. He surprised himself with how easily he did it, and sat it back down. _This is ridiculous_ he thought, and went over to dresser, still full of clothes, to try to pick it up, and again, succeeded, easily.

He lifted up his dresser and placed it onto his bed, and lifted them together, again, pretty easy. He didn’t feel any strain.

“How fucking strong am I?” said aloud. “I need a better way to test this” but he couldn’t actually think of one, so he resigned himself to stacking things onto his bed and seeing how much of it he could lift.

He was up to his bedside table when his mother knocked on the door and yelled for him to come down for dinner. Startled, he jumped up really high, and, while being scared he’d fall back down and break his leg,  found himself miraculously stuck to the ceiling, palms facing flat against the plaster, completely stuck to it and his feet, not stuck due to the socks, but in perfect formation for him to be looking down onto his room.

 _What in the everloving fuck?_ he thought.

“Zayn, open the door. It’s time for dinner and you’ve been up here all day.”

“Yea, mum, coming soon just… washing up a bit can you give me a minute, please?”

“Sure, hun, just come down quickly.”

“Got it.” and his mother left downstairs. He was too high up to hang from the ceiling, he was sure he’d end up pulling hands off.

“Okay, Zayn, spiders have an evolutionary mechanism that helps them stick to walls, you just have to concentrate and figure out where that is, and release it.”

He concentrated on his muscles for a very long time and found himself still stuck to the ceiling, and he knew that if he didn’t come down soon his mother would get worried, which caused him to panic a bit more. He tried to shake his hands free, but that didn’t work, either.

“Okay, Malik, just relax.” and he took a few deep breaths “You’re not gonna be up here forever” he let out a nervous laugh, and took a few more breaths, and calmed himself down, and then, fell off of the ceiling landing perfectly on his feet.

He looked at his hands and noticed there were tiny, dormant hairs now all over them, and the skin on them was a bit rougher.

 _So it only reacts to fear and calm? That’s... not useful at all_  he thought, and put his room back into place before heading downstairs for dinner.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Keni mclaheyed and Sahana liguel for beta-ing for me, and to Angel louweetomlinson for letting me use her in the story!

“Okay, so a base produces hydronium ions in water and an acid produces hydroxide ions?” Niall asked, his face concentrating on the book in front of him. They were sitting on the floor in Niall’s bedroom.

“According to Arrhenius Theory, yea. I think that’s the simplest definition.” Zayn answered him.

“What’s the difference between hydronium and hydroxide?”

“Simply put hydronium has a positive charge. Hydroxide has a negative one.”

“I am never going to pass this test.”

“You’ll be fine, Niall.” Zayn said.

“You’ll probably do better than Louis on this calc quiz if he doesn’t stop messing around.” said a girl with soft brown skin and curly hair from the other side of the rug.

“If I recall, girlfriends are supposed to be distractions from work. You and Zayn always make study nights boring with your genius intellect.” Louis said.

“Angel’s right, Lou.” Zayn said, “You’re going for a solid C in the class if you don’t concentrate.”

“Some of us are okay with being average.”  
“Except you’re going to need a ‘B’ in calc if you even want a chance in getting into college.” Niall said.

“It’ll be fine. I’ll have my engineering girlfriend take care of me.”

Angel laughed and rolled her eyes at him. “Sure, Louis.” and he kissed her cheek.

There was a knock at Niall’s door, and after him yelling “Come in” in walked his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Horan.

“It’s nice to see everyone.” Mr. Horan said with a smile.

“Nice to see you,too.” the three non-Horans answered in chorus, and then looked all around at each other in discomfort.

“Zayn, I was hoping to have seen you as an entrant for the BioCenter Internship.” Niall’s mom said.

“What internship?”  
“Oh, sorry. I was supposed to tell you about that a month ago.” Niall said. “Sorry, bro.”

“It’s a contest for a paid internship at the BioCenter. Three days a week, two hours each day. Twelve spots are open.” She explained to him.

“When is it due?” Zayn asked.

“It’s due by the end of next week. You have to submit it via a scientist at the center and that may take some time, but if you get it here by friday I can submit it for you.”

“What do I have to do?”  
“An essay on an original concept, and you need to do an experiment or try to recreate what you talk about in your essay physically.”

“…I think I can do that in a week… maybe.” Zayn frowned.

“I say go for it, Zayn.” Niall’s dad said. “Even if you don’t get it all done you could still try.. We’d love to see you around the center sometime.”  
“Especially since we can barely get Niall to go.” Mrs. Horan said.

“I went for the trip, mum, remember? And you guys are only at the center for weekly inspections, anyway, and I see you every day.”

“Fair enough, Niall.” his mom said.

“Still, Zayn, I think you should do it!” Niall exclaimed, “Might give me a reason to visit the center more often, anyway.”

Niall’s mom smiled at him.

“I think I will.” Zayn said. “I’ve just gotta think up a project to do it on.”

"Well, if you decide to do it, let us know!" Niall's mother said, and the parents left the room.

"You think you're gonna do it?" Niall asked Zayn after his parents left.  
"Not sure. I might?" Zayn thought for a moment "Let's focus on studying for now."  


The next day Niall offered to have George take him home, but he declined and decided to just take the bus, riding in that limo without Niall usually made him feel really weird. George was nice, but he’d rather just walk, especially since he needed a bit of time to himself to think about what he was going to do for the contest, and not trying to concentrate on whether or not the car ride was as awkward for George as it was for him.

On his way home, cutting the corner about three blocks away from his house he heard a woman making high-pitched noises from inside an alley. He peeked his head around inside and saw that she was on her knees on the ground, gathering her wallet out of her purse, while a guy in a mask stood over her with a panicked smirk on his face. He didn’t really know what to do. He figured he could take the guy with his new found strength, but he’s never been someone to go looking for trouble.

 _Well, I didn’t really look for this_ , he thought _and if I don’t do anything I’ll be thinking about this all night._

He groaned before turning the corner into the alley and yelling, “Hey, leave her alone.”

The man turned toward Zayn and walked up the alley toward him, “And what are you gonna do about it?” he asked with a menacing grin on his face.

“Do you really want to find out?” Zayn asked. He didn’t really know what he was saying, but he figured asking nicely wouldn’t get the guy to stop, either.

“I think I do.” The man responded as he reached Zayn.

Zayn figured that he should be the first one to strike, there was no way he’d know the man was attacking him, but he assumed the guy wasn’t trying to give him some candy. He waited until he was close enough to be hit, and immediately punched the guy in the face. The man's face flew back and a splatter of blood flew out of his mouth along with a groan of pain. Then, Zayn grabbed his arm and threw him into the building next to them. The guy bounced against the wall a bit before falling down and not moving.

Zayn was panting, more from being nervous than anything else. He didn't feel tired, but his heart was beating fast and he could feel droplets of sweat forming on his head.

The woman ran over to Zayn and touched his shoulder. He jumped up a bit, she looked over at him for a moment, eyes wide, waiting for him to calm down and realize that she wasn't a threat. “Did you kill him?" she asked in a soft voice looking over at the man, and back to Zayn.

Zayn looked over at the man and noticed his chest rising and falling. “No, I think he’s just knocked out.”

“It's okay. You'd better get home. Thank you.” she said. They both left the alley quickly with Zayn partially running home with a mixture of excitement and terror.

When he returned home he told his mother about the internship. Being around his mom made him feel safe, and calmed him down a little.

“I’d have no problem having you take the internship. I just hired another waiter at the restaurant so you’d only be needed in emergencies, anyway.”

“Now all I’ve got to do is think up a project to do in a week...” he said with a sigh.

“You’ve done more with less time, sweetie. You’re a genius, almost as smart as your sisters.”

“Safaa’s got me beat by at least 20 IQ points, mum.”

“Safaa’s got everyone beat by at least 20 IQ points, love. Go on up to your room and think up your project. If you need any supplies let me know.”

Zayn retreated upstairs to his room, and started to think about what he’d just done in addition to trying to figure out if he was actually going to try and go for the internship. On the first matter he figured that handing out vigilante justice never worked out well for anybody, but if he did see someone who needed help he should probably help them. Seeing as how that was probably one of the only times he’s seen someone who needed help he figured he wouldn’t have to deal with it too often. Still, he felt scared. He knew that it wasn't too much, but he still felt panicky. The very idea of continuously fighting people and then looking over his shoulder to make sure they weren't following him, or that no one saw him, or that he wasn't somehow going to get blamed for doing something wrong just didn't sit well with him. He knew the danger was over, but he still felt uneasy.

It was a catch-22. He knew he'd feel bad if he hadn't helped the lady, but he also felt jumpy for helping. Still, he knew he'd made the right decision... he was just trying his best to forget it.

He laid himself down on his bed and closed his eyes, breathing deeply to calm his body down. 

To take his mind off of it, he focused on the internship. He figured it’d be good to do, in fact he knew he'd end up doing it the moment Niall's parents brought it up,  but he still didn’t know what to do his project on. He also felt like it would help him figure out why they were trying to build spider-people.

 _I’ll have to think of something that would be guaranteed to get me in, but that won’t give it away that I know something unless I want to become a science experiment_ he thought _but I do know that they’re interested in acquiring animal abilities. I could maybe do something on that._

He opened up his laptop and looked over all of his bookmarks _but if I do only spiders, they’ll know that I know something, if I don’t do spiders, I might not get picked._

Zayn was stuck, he didn’t know how to do this so that he wouldn’t be so heavily studied, but still get picked. He went through his laptop and looked up spider abilities, and read on some forums about other animal abilities that people night want.

 _Okay, I’ll do lots of animals._ He decided that it would be smart to focus heavily on something that wasn't a spider, but still include them.

He looked over his bookmarked spider pages again, and figured that the best thing to make for the experiment would probably be a polymer base used as webbing, since most of the articles focused on strength. 

Then, he looked for other animal abilities that people might want to acquire. Since he wanted to keep insects as a theme in some respect, he landed on the pheromones of the Queen Ant, and trying to harness them to get people to listen to him. The other thing he decided to use was the oil coating of a duck’s feathers, because he felt it would be fairly easy to do his project on.

He decided to work on his project for two hours each night, conducting his research on replicating these things first, then actually building them, and then using his notes from building and his research to write his essay.

The first part of the replication that he worked on was the oil, as he figured it’d be easiest. He researched the Preen Gland in ducks to see which oils would help him best recreate the same affect. He looked up oils that were most smiliar to the preen gland oil, and worked on thinning them down. The hardest part of it was creating an oil that could go on a feather and not weigh it down or keep it from being fluffy, but still resisted water. He worked his way around this by using coconut oil, and thinning it down with turpentine.  All the while typing up his process and measurements, and keeping track of all of his research for that portion of the essay.

A couple nights later he worked on his webbing polymer, in the end he created two; one wasn’t as strong as the other as it left out an ingredient, and the other was extremely strong and worked like webbing, but even better. He put them both into compressed cans to be used as silly string and decided to keep the stronger one to himself.

Lastly, he worked on his pheromones, and he couldn’t completely mimic the ant pheromones in humans, but he did get really close. When he tested it on Louis, he agreed with about 90% of Zayn’s wacky suggestions, which never happens, and left Niall confused.

In the end, he gave his project to Niall’s parents on Friday night, feeling accomplished, and proud of himself.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Yuchun gregjamesbond and and Angel booweetomlinson for letting me use them as characters! And thank you to Sahana and Keni for beta-ing my fic!

Zayn knew he got the internship before he actually got it. He got an email from the BioCenter staff telling him that they would be announcing the winners at a ceremony where all of the finalists would attend, but when he got to school Niall told him that the only people who were getting emails were the 12 people who won, and they’d be starting right away while congratulating him for getting it and assuring him that his parents weren’t being biased.

“The scientists in the genetic engineering sect of the BioCenter really liked your work. My parents were worried that they’d be upset about the late entry, but they really loved all of it. I think they might’ve pulled some strings if they had to, but you were a favorite the moment they saw what your project was about.” Niall smiled at him, proud that his best friend got into the program. “Anyway now mum’s expecting me to visit you there at least once a week. She wants me to be more interested in science and whatnot. I’m basically in the program, too.”

“Sorry about that, Niall.”

“Nah, it’s cool. It might help me in school and it’d just be hanging out with you so it works. Plus, Yuchun got into the program and-”

“Ah this explains your enthusiasm.”

“I mean I’d be okay with it either way, but if I get to see her more I’m not exactly upset about it.” Niall responded

He had a big smile on his face when he walked into the BioCenter, surrounded by other high school kids who looked nervous. There was one pale-skinned boy with stringy blond hair who looked like he was going to throw up. When they were all briefed and told that they’d made it Zayn noticed that the girls outnumbered the boys by two. He was paired with Yuchun to work with a Geneticist by the name of Professor Vemp, he figured that him working with Yuchun was of Niall’s doing, but tried not to dwell on it too much. Professor Vemp was a tall, thin woman with wire-rimmed glasses, a sweet smile, and dark brown skin. She wore bows in her hair and looked more like a young college intern than an actual established Professor. She explained to them how she was well versed in genetic engineering and how she graduated from her college’s biology and engineering programs as a double major at the young age of 20 years old, and then went on to finish her graduate studies at the age of 24; giving her prime access to the scientific field when she decided to enter it.

“So, you’re a genius?” Zayn asked her  
“I don’t like the term genius, it reminds me of lazy smart people who are given a free pass, I like prodigy better... prodigies work hard.” she smiled at him “I trust that all three of you know the basics of cell structure?” she began

“I think so...” Niall responded

“Well,” she said “if you need me to go over anything just let me know.” Niall smiled at her and nodded in response

“Now, our branch is focused on engineering new tissue and cell repair that can help people to heal faster. In some cases this means reconstructing a part of a cell and bonding it with another type of cell in order to see if that will help make it stronger.”

She took out a mini remote control and pressed a round white button on top of it. It brought out a holographic map that showed an enlarged cell.

“Today what we want you to do is replicate cell repair. You’ll do it on computer simulation first.” and when she said this she pressed another button on her remote that opened up the desks in front of them a produced three tiny, white laptops for each of them “and then you’ll actually try it with an animal cell.”

 _This is wicked_ Zayn thought to himself

“Which animal cells will we be working with, and which part of them will we be repairing?” Yuchun asked

“For now we’ll be working with the cells of an ostrich, you’ll be repairing minimal damage done to the cell’s nucleus, but binding it with the cell of a kiwi bird, to see if it has any effect on the replication or how the cell behaves.”

“So, we’re like conducting actual research right now?” She asked again

“Yes, the research conducted while you are in this program could possibly be published in scholarly journals. If the findings are significant you could all be publishing scholarly articles before you graduate from High School.”

“That is sick.” Zayn said with a wide smile on his face. Professor Vemp smiled at him and continued on to explain how the computer program worked.

 

While they were working they were greeted by a tall, scary looking man with pale skin and slick blond hair. He walked in with a straight face, eyeing Zayn the entire time.

“Zayn, Yuchun, Niall, this is Doctor Bianco. He’s the head of our department in the BioCenter as well as the head of Genetic Engineering at Horan INT.

“Pleasure to meet you all.” He said with what appeared to Zayn to be a forced smile. “I hope that Professor Vemp will be keeping a close watch on all of you.”

“I will be. They’re doing excellent work so far.”  
“Good, good. This is Zayn Malik, correct?”  
Zayn looked at him, nervously “Yes, that’s me."  
“You turned your project in on very short notice, but I was incredibly impressed with your work. I hope to see you around here more often.”

“Well, I hope to be here the entire internship, sir.” Zay said with a nervous smile.  
“Good. I’ll be checking up on you. We could use more minds like yours at Horan INT.” he said, and left the room without saying anything else.

“That guy is creepy.” Zayn whispered to Niall after he left.   
“I think so, too.” Professor Vemp said “but he’s my boss, and apparently he’s brilliant.” she shrugged “Don’t worry, Zayn. Try not to let him get to you, and if anything sinister’s going on Niall’s parents would know about it.” She smiled at him, and he felt more at ease with those words. Niall’s parents were probably the nicest people on the face of the planet, and they only wanted to do good in the world.

 

By the end of their two hour shift Zayn had successfully repaired the nucleus of two Ostrich cells, and bonded three of them. Yuchun, had repaired three, and bonded three, and Niall, to his own surprise, had kept up fairly well repairing two ostrich cells, and bonding two nuclei with that of a kiwi’s.

“I can’t believe I was only one off from you!”

“I’m proud of you, Niall. I knew you’d be able to keep up.”  
“Mum and dad’re gonna be so happy when I tell them I actually did good at something scientific.”

Zayn wrapped his arm around Niall’s neck and messed in his hair with his free hand   
“They’d be happy for you anyway.” and they smiled at each other.

 

Zayn returned home with a smile on his face, and a light feeling in his chest. He was actually doing something that would majorly benefit his life, and he was getting paid for it. He felt like he could do anything he put his mind to. He went upstairs to his bedroom, and got started on his homework with a smile on his face, happily breezing through every subject. _This is gonna be a sick year_ he thought to himself.

About two hours into his homework, he had a knock on his door, though already cracked.

“Mind if I come in, Zayn?” It was Harry, looking particularly modelesque. Zayn figured he must have just gotten back from a shoot, because  his hair was filled with product and his skin appeared to have a golden glow, and Harry’s usually pale and doesn’t do anything to his hair.

“Sure. I’m just doing some homework.”

 

Harry crossed the room and sat down on Zayn’s bed across from him. He crossed his legs and turned to face Zayn.

 

“So, remember when I said we should hang out more?”  Harry asked as he played with the fabric at the end of his jacket.

“Yea, I remember.” Zayn was only half paying attention, reading through his school books, and not even looking up at Harry.

“There’s this art thing...”

“Yea.” Zayn still wasn’t paying attention.

Harry’s voice flattened “It’s in the middle of a nudist community in Hawaii.”

“Mhm.” Zayn answered. Harry scoffed

“Zayn, you’re not even paying attention to me.” and he reached over to him, and yanked the book from his hands, closing it in the process.

Zayn sighed _I was only ignoring you because you make me nervous_ “Okay, sorry. What is it, Harry?”  
“It’s an art thing. Well, it’s a model thing. I modelled for this artist and there’s an exhibit and I have to go, but we’re supposed to bring a guest. I’d take Liam but he’s more of a... steak-and-potatoes type of guy if you know what I mean?”  
“Dense and tough?”  
“No... just...”

“He’s not as smart as me?”  
“Well very few people are... anyway it’s this Friday in Soho. Do you want to go with me? Liam doesn't know art as well as you do.”

“If Liam finds out about this am I going to be ripped to shreds?”  
“I’m not dating the bloke we’re just friends, and I don’t think he’ll be picking on you for a long time after what you did to his arm.”

 

Zayn smirked

“That’s not funny, you could’ve seriously injured him.”  
Zayn rolled his eyes “If I’m not mistaken, I did.”  
“The antagonism between you two is getting kind of old.”  
“I’ve been telling him that for years.” Zayn said with a smile on his face, and he reached over and snatched his book from Harry, opening it back up to the page he was on.

“Zayn.” and Harry lunged forward, knocking Zayn onto his back and hovering over him on his arms

 _Why is this so easy for him?_ Zayn thought.

“Are you going to go with me? I don’t want to take anyone else and we haven’t hung out in a while.”

Zayn looked up at him “Sure, Harry. I’ll go with you.”

 

Harry smiled, and reached down to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you. We’ll leave at 7, but I’ll be over at six to dress you.” and he pushed himself up and got up from the bed, walking out of the door saying “I’m excited!” as he walked down the stairs. Zayn sat himself upright, staring at the door, smiling so hard that he was sure his face was going to burst apart, cheeks first. He stared at the door and let out another, sigh _Why is it so easy for him to just do that?_

 

“He kissed you on the cheek?” Angel asked, under her breath in the school library.

“Yea... it was weird? It didn’t feel like a crush-kiss it felt like... Harry being Harry...” and his expression changed from excited to somber.

“Zayn, I think he likes you. I heard that’s why Liam attacked you the other day.”

“What?” Niall asked, whispering

Angel gestured from all of them to come in close.  
“Well, Liam and Harry have never actually been official, but you’ve always been friends with Harry, and Liam doesn’t like it. Apparently he heard that Harry wanted to hang out with you, and then he got mad.”

“That explains a lot...” Zayn said

“Zayn,” Angel said “I do think Harry likes you... I know you’ve been pining over him for years now.”  
“Thanks, Lou.” Zayn interjected   
“She’s my girlfriend, I tell her everything.” Louis said and went back to reading.  
“Anyway,” Angel continued “but I do think that he likes you, too. He just may not know how to show it yet.”

“Told you anything could happen during senior year.” Niall said to Zayn with a big smile on his face.

Zayn nodded and went back to his reading, he didn’t want to get himself too excited over nothing.

 

He went home that night, and played with his other webbing. He wanted to see how strong it really was, but due to his previous adventures inside of his room testing strength, he knew staying in there wouldn’t actually help him. He decided to go someplace he could actually test the strength of it. He changed into some old clothes, and snuck into a junkyard that wasn’t too far from his house through a fence in the back. He smiled when he finally got in _I used to come here all the time to play when I was younger._ He strutted through the junkyard looking for heavy things to test his webbing, and came across a large stack of long support beams. He picked one up, and it felt incredibly light so, he couldn’t actually gauge how heavy it was, but he figured that a support beam usually has to be picked up using a machine, so it had to be pretty heavy.

He began to make a simple structure using his webbing to hold the ends of the beams together, bending some with his hands to make sure it was secure, and crossing others for tension and support. After a few hours he was finished building what looked like a miniature bridge, big enough for him to walk on, but not something you’d see in an actual city. He went onto the bridge and jumped up and down, making sure the structure wouldn’t fall, and was pretty impressed with it. He then took a bit of his webbing and stuck it to the bottom, and then got another beam, and rolled it into as tight of a ball that he could manage, and used more of his webbing to hang the beam from the middle of the structure. He stayed for a few minutes to see if it would actually break, but it didn’t. So, he decided to leave it there for a few days and see if anything would happen to it. He went home, showered, and prepared himself for the ridiculousness that was bound to occur the next day.

 

Zayn didn’t understand how Harry could be such a great model but dress so badly.

“I am not wearing brown boots when everything else I have on is black, Harry.”

“Girls wear red pumps with black dresses all of the time.”

“This isn’t a black dress this is just black clothes.”

“You’re being so difficult.”

“You know what? We can compromise. I’ll wear the brown shoes, but not if everything else is black.”

“Well, what colors do you want to wear?”  
“It’s not about what colors I want to wear it’s about what colors don’t make me look like an idiot.”

“Fine.”

“Look.” and he took off his black shirt, replacing it with a white one, and putting on a grey blazer over it.

“Does that really go with brown boots?”  
“I’m not wearing brown boots I’m wearing my black ones.” Zayn said reaching under his bed to pull out his black boots and put them on.  
"Zayn, you lied!"  
"Only to shut you up for a second. Why are you so bent on me wearing brown boots, anyway?”  
“I just like them is all...”

“Well, you can like them a different day.”

Harry sighed. “Yea, okay let’s go, Mr. Cheekbones.” and Harry turned to go downstairs with Zayn trailing behind him

“This is the second time you’ve mentioned my cheekbones.” Zayn said as they walked outside and got into Harry’s mom’s car.

“That’s because they’re nice.” Harry said and softly patted Zayn on the cheek before driving off.

 

The event was being held on the top floor of some swanky apartment right in the middle of Soho. The artist had multiple portraits of people set up all over the room, including one of Harry which Harry himself was particularly bashful about.

“It’s a great painting, really, Harry.”  
“My eyes look weird.”  
Zayn looked from the painting, and back to Harry

“That’s how your eyes look, love. Sorry to break it to you.”  
“That’s how my eyes look?” Harry said with a strained look on his face, “All of the time?”

“Don’t worry, it’s not exactly a bad thing.” Zayn said, smiling at him “You have... nice eyes, Harry. Pretty eyes.” and Harry smiled at him for a second before dragging him off to meet the artist.

 

“Hector. This is my friend Zayn.”

“Another model friend?” Hector asked “He would have been perfect for this. I wish I’d met him sooner.”

“I’m not a model.” Zayn said “Just an art nerd. You’re really good.”

“Oh, well, you could’ve fooled me, and thank you.”

“Yea, the shading is beautiful, especially for a painting, and your attention to detail is perfect.”  
“Thank you.” Hector said again with a big smile. “I like him, Harry. He looks like a model, but he has all of the knowledge of an artist.” and he walked off to greet other people.

“I don’t look like a model” Zayn said when they were alone again.  
“You do, actually.” Harry looked over at Zayn “Your face is kind of like perfect.” and he said it, and Zayn liked it, but he said it with a straight face, and monotone so Zayn really didn’t know if he was trying to state it as a fact or saying it subjectively, but he settled on the former, which he figured wasn’t actually really that bad.

“Thanks.” Zayn said and they returned to walking around the gallery, and gazing at the other portraits.

 

After a while of walking around Zayn became a bit more comfortable with himself. Everyone there was smiling at him and Harry hadn’t left him alone with anyone for more than five seconds, which he appreciated. He was in the middle of explaining to someone a cross hatching technique when there was a huge explosion in the kitchen, and the cook came out screaming. There was a huge fire blazing out of the kitchen, and everyone began to run out of the apartment in a mess of panicked screaming. So much so that the doorway was blocked, and Zayn began to look for another way out as the fire spread into the entire apartment. He found an emergency exit on the other side of the apartment and yelled for everyone to leave through it while running out himself. He ran down the stairs and out of the apartment, a crowd of people running behind him.

When he got outside, he ran around to the front of the building.  After everyone else had settled and it looked like no one else was coming out, he started to call for Harry in the crowd only to get no answer. He pulled out his cell phone to call Harry, but it just went to voicemail.

 _Oh, God, Harry._ He said to himself while looking up at the apartment from the ground and watching the flames engulf it. He tried to run back upstairs, but was held back by Hector.

“You don’t understand. I think Harry’s up there.”

“Zayn, I can’t let you go back upstairs; it’s not safe.” and he pulled him back into the crowd.

Zayn felt tears welling up into his eyes as he watched the flames in the apartment grow bigger. _No, no._ he thought to himself, and snuck around to the side of the building. He took a deep breath and put his hands onto the wall.

 _Okay, I’m scared now work._ He thought and placed his hands on the wall, but when he attempted to climb up it he slipped. “I’M SCARED NOW WORK” he yelled, and he felt the skin on his hand raise and stick to the wall and began to pull himself up, tears streaming down his face. When he got to the top of the building he pulled himself up, and kicked a window open, ripping his hands off of the wall, not caring if they were ready to detach or not.

 

“HARRY” he called while frantically searching through the crumbling apartment. He heard a muffled scream coming from near the front door and ran towards it. He found Harry, pinned under a beam trying to pull himself free. He reached down to touch the beam, but it was hot, and he burned himself. Then, he waited a few seconds, took a deep breath, picked it up, and quickly tossed it over to the side. He pulled Harry up to standing.   
“Are you alright?” Harry nodded and Zayn pulled him close and they ran out of the apartment back downstairs through the back way.

 

They got outside, and Zayn grabbed Harry’s face on both sides, looking into his eyes to make sure they were focused.

“Can you hear me? Is everything okay? Are you okay?”

Harry didn’t say anything, he just leaned his face into Zayn’s and kissed him. It was sloppy and frantic and he pulled Zayn so close the him that Zayn could’ve sworn that he was actually trying to meld their bodies together instead of kiss him, but he still liked it. Harry broke their mouths apart and whispered “You came back for me. You saved my life.” into Zayn’s mouth, then wrapped himself around him, buried his face into Zayn’s chest and cried.

Zayn backed into the wall of the building and slid down it, Harry still attached to him, and stroked his hair. “Of course I came back for you” he said _I’d come back for anyone if I thought I could save them_ he sighed and leaned his cheek on Harry’s head and stroked his hair and thought to himself _saving people is going to be a thing now..._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Charlotte, justafeeling, Isabella, goldenyears, Zarry1, PhirideuAnsari, jennystyles, superhuman, and the anons who left comments on my fic! Also to everyone who has given kudos and everyone who's reading!  
> Thanks to Keni and Sahana for beta-ing and to Yuchun and Angel for letting me use them as characters!

After the fire Zayn was sure that he and Harry weren’t exactly dating, but he was also sure that they were definitely a thing. Harry had resigned himself to watching from his window until Zayn came home, only to show up silently in Zayn’s room while he was working on homework and laying his head in his lap while he was reading books. He sometimes wondered why Zayn would come back home wearing old dirty clothes and having sticky hands, but he never said anything, especially since Zayn always showered as soon as he got in. They still wandered in different circles at school. It wasn’t exactly intentional; they were seniors in High School who both ran in completely different crowds, but they didn’t ignore or avoid each other.

Zayn alone,  on the other hand, was beginning to get a handle on his newfound abilities. He visited the junkyard everyday that he didn’t have his internship to test them and his webbing. He found that his webbing could hold for about two days before it started to decay, and that it could easily support at least three times his own weight. He also worked it into two compact, pressurized wristlets. He’d set up an obstacle course in a section of the junkyard to practice everything.  His strength seemed to eerily increase every time he visited the junkyard, and his webbing proved to be useful for travel as well as holding things together. Which he discovered once when he first began practicing with it.

He had put together makeshift monkeybars to practice pull-ups, and was actually just trying to reinforce them with the webbing when he pressed down lightly onto one of his wristlets and instead of letting out a glob that he had to use his hand to work into whatever shape he wanted, a long stream of webbing came out. _Just like an actual spider’s silk_ he thought. He looked up at the monkey bars, and then back down to his wristlet with a wild curiosity in his eyes “I wonder...” and before he knew it, he was shooting streams of webbing at each bar, and swinging from them. On the last bar, he shot the web to it, flung himself forward, and let it go, flipping in the air before landing on the ground in a crouched position, resembling a frog. “So, agility, and strength are both improving.” he said to himself, and stood up, looking at his hands and seeing tiny pieces of junkyard crap attached to them “...resistance to stickiness is not improving.” and he brushed his hands off onto his shirt. He spent the rest of his time on target practice with the webbing, along with a little more swinging.

 

“Do you see this, man?” Niall said, jumping in front of him the next day at school, and holding a piece of paper with scribbles all over it in front of his face “DO YOU SEE THIS? NINETY-FOUR PERCENT ON MY CHEMISTRY TEST!”

Zayn took the test out of Niall’s hands to inspect “I knew you could do it, Niall!” he said and hugged him.  
“And it’s all thanks to my personal tutor, Mr. Zayn Malik.”

Zayn shrugged “I couldn’t tutor you if you weren’t willing to learn. It’s all on you, Niall.” and Niall smiled at him.

“I am actually good at science, who knew?”

“I knew! It just took a little effort.”

“Speaking of which, I’m not going to the BioCenter tonight.”

“Ah, man gets one A and suddenly he’s done with science forever.”

Niall laughed “Nah. Parents want to take a trip to Ireland for something about ‘International Affairs’ which really just means they want to visit some cousins without being bothered by work.”

“You’re leaving tonight and you’ve just now told me.”

“I’m forgetful. Remember when I didn’t tell you about the contest until a week before it ended?”

“You didn’t tell me about it, your parents did.”

“See! All the more reason this A is important.” he said as he kissed his test.

“Beautiful. When will you get back?”

“I’ll be back by Monday.”

“Well now I’ll be stuck with Louis all week.”

“Bonding time.” Niall said with a grin on his face.

 

At the BioCenter he and Yuchun were finishing up altering cell function by severing out certain pieces of encoding when Doctor Bianco entered their station again. He held a stern look on his face and did not say anything, he simply looked around and glanced at Zayn more than Zayn felt was necessary or comfortable, and then he left. Zayn looked over at Professor Vemp and whispered

“He’s still creepy.”

“I agree.” Yuhcun whispered after him “and he likes to look at you a lot.”

“It’s fine.” Professor Vemp answered, “Zayn did a project that contained spiders. Doctor Bianco heads the project on Genetically Engineered Spiders. He probably finds you interesting because of that.”

 _That’s interesting_ Zayn thought. “How long does he stay after? Is there anyway I could talk to him about it?”

“Ah, not so creepy now that you’ve got common interests, huh?” He stays after for only a few hours just like all of us, but your best bet is to set an appointment with him during BioCenter hours. He often meets with students during those times.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Zayn said

 

When he got home, he decided to Google Doctor Bianco and see if he could find anymore information about him. A lot of the articles that he’d found on spiders actually listed Doctor Bianco as a contributor. As well as a few other accolades and his biography, which, Zayn wasn’t exactly interested in reading about the life of a military brat turned science nerd who ended up with a high rank at Horan INT.

 _Why does he want to build spider people?_ Zayn thought and let out a big sigh “I’m never going to figure this out.”

“Figure what out?” Zayn’s little sister, Safaa, said from the door, walking into his room and plopping down on the bed next to him.

He smiled at her and turned to face her.

“I’m trying to figure out if someone is a bad person or not.”

“Is this about Harry being over here a lot more lately?”

Zayn laughed “No. It’s about important science stuff.”

“Well, if you want to know if someone’s bad you’ve got to talk to them, or watch them, but the second one is probably illegal.”

Zayn nodded. “That’s true.”

“Dad says dinner’s ready and I wanted you to give me a piggyback downstairs.”

“Ah, only offering life advice if there’s something in return I see. C’mon.” and he crouched down, letting her climb onto his back and carrying her downstairs thinking to himself that the last option doesn’t sound too bad.

 

When he finished dinner he went back upstairs to think up a way to investigate Doctor Bianco more closely. _I could climb into his office at night, but if I’m caught on screen I’ll get put out of the internship._ He looked into his closet for some clothes to wear. _All of this shows my face_ he thought, and went back to his laptop to look up things that would cover his face. _I could make like a costume,_ he thought. _I do sort of have superpowers now, and I do help people. Every hero needs a costume_. He perused the internet for hours until he figured out what he actually wanted to wear. He found a cool-looking pair of yellow goggles and set of knee pads, elbow pads, and arm warmers which he thought would all come in handy. He figured he’d just wear some jeans, and his blue hoodie for overall body coverage, but for shoes, he found some knee-length red converse that he thought looked cool, and purchased these things along with a red backpack and some relatively cheap computer hacking hardware that night. It was the first thing he’d spent any money from his internship on.

 

Everything that Zayn ordered came sometime during the middle of the week, but he waited until Friday night to actually use them. He figured it’d be better to get this done over the weekend when the BioCenter’s hours were shorter. He’d spent all week training himself extra hard at the junkyard, still noticing that his agility and strength were increasing at what he deemed an alarming and unnecessary rate, and he’d gained full control over his ability to stick and un-stick himself to things. He also discovered that he could use his duck feather oil on his hands before practicing with his webbing to keep his hands from sticking to it, and though he hadn’t completely mastered swinging on his webbing, he was at the point where he could easily direct where he wanted to go... he just had a bit of trouble stopping when the landing didn’t involve some fancy flip.

 

That Friday, as Zayn put on his jeans, and his hoodie, pulling the hood over his head, he felt like maybe getting spider powers wasn’t such a bad thing after all. As he dressed himself putting on his arm warmers, and, lacing up his shoes, he felt like maybe superheroes were real. Maybe this is where they start off, and maybe he could be one. Maybe he could save people, and maybe he was going to save some right now by figuring this whole thing out. It was the first time he’d ever felt that way, and he liked it.

He filled up his bookbag, and put it on. Then, he placed his goggles over his face and hood, and climbed out of his bedroom window onto the roof of his house to start his journey to the BioCenter. When he got to the first big building on the edge of the city, he climbed about halfway up. Then, he sat out on a ledge to see where he would shoot his first string of webbing. He spotted the ledge of a building a bit away from him, and checked ahead of that one to make sure he’d be able to get to the next one, and then took a deep breath. He stood up, and shot his first string of web out onto the ledge, and it caught. He tugged on it, even though he’d tested this before, just to be sure that it’d hold. _Here goes nothing_ he said to himself, and pushed himself off from the ledge,  holding tightly onto the web, and then shooting out a string to the next building. When he got about halfway between the two, he let go of the first string, and placed both hands on the second, looking ahead to shoot another string of web onto the next building. He couldn’t help but smile and marvel to himself at the fact that it actually worked. The wind was in his face, and he was sure that if he kept his mouth open for too long he’d swallow a bug, but it was actually working. He kept his mind alert on the buildings so that he didn’t end up slamming into anything, and before he knew it he reached the BioCenter.

When he got there he landed safely on a ledge about halfway up the building, and climbed the rest of the way up to the floor the held Doctor Bianco’s office. He pushed a window open and climbed in, staying on the ceiling, crawling around until he got to his office, and slipped inside the tiny window atop his door. He crawled on the ceiling next to the security camera that was inside of the room, reached into his pocket, and put a tiny sensor on it, jamming it, then dropped down onto the floor.

Once standing upright, he went over to Doctor Bianco’s desk, and turned on the computer. He then opened up his backpack and took out his hacking hardware, using it to bypass any security codes that were keeping the computer locked fairly easily. Once actually in, he didn’t really know what to search for. He spent at least an hour searching through open files on the computer using the term “spiders” but he kept coming back to the same thing; abilities being given to people. He searched again and decoded some encrypted files, but couldn’t find anything new or relevant as most of the encrypted files were just his time as a military brat and his links to bases in different countries. He couldn’t find any definitive answer as to why Doctor Bianco would want to create spider people, and after thinking it over, he realized that he really didn’t have much evidence to support him even believing that he did except him being creepy and oddly interested in him.

He packed his stuff back into his bookbag, and shutdown the computer. Then, he climbed back onto the ceiling and removed the sensor from the camera, and left, a bit defeated.

He was swinging home slowly, a bit drained and a bit sad that he hadn’t gone any further, letting the cool air hit the open parts of his face and trying not to think about it too much when, upon reaching the center of downtown, he saw a huge car pile-up which he didn’t really understand. It was about 10pm on a friday night, not really late enough for people to be getting back from clubs, and not early enough for them to all to be trying to get somewhere. He looked again and saw a car flying over the others, rotating towards him, and before thinking, he moved out of the way _. I should’ve tried to stop that_ he thought after, but carried on toward the center of the commotion, and when he got there he didn’t believe what was happening.

There, in the center of a huge four-way intersection, was a giant spider. It was moving around frantically tossing cars out of the way in the process. People were abandoning their cars, and running as far away as they possibly could, and Zayn felt like he should do the same, but instead of listening to that instinct he thought _One way or another I’m going to be a hero tonight_  and flung himself directly into the chaos.

He lowered himself directly in front of the spider, and he was terrified; he had no plan, and the spider was towering over him, but he figured if he could distract it, he might be able to at least lead it away from the city until the military comes in or something.

“Oi! Hey, mister spider, down here!” He yelled, jumping up and down in front of it, but it didn’t notice. So, he figured he’d have to come up with something different.

He took a deep breath, looking at the way the spider was standing, and stuck out his arm.  _This is really all I’ve got at this point so I hope it works_ , and he let out a glob of webbing at one of the spider’s “feet” to attempt to stop it in its place. It faltered a bit, noticing that it was stuck to the ground, and looked down toward Zayn, and upon noticing him let out an eerie screech at him. _What the fuck spiders can’t scream_ was Zayn’s last thought before he was flying across the pavement a few feet off of the ground and landed, back-first onto the hood of a car. He crashed into the windshield and shattered it, leaving a huge dent in the hood of the car.

He sighed _This is going to be harder than I thought_ as he pulled himself out of the dent, and thought for a moment. _Okay so if I were at home and this was a regular spider, I’d just squish it with a shoe, but I don’t have a giant shoe._ He looked around for a moment, and the scene was deserted except for him, and a few reporters in the distance.

“WOULD ANY OF YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE A GIANT SHOE?” he yelled at the reporters, laughing to himself. _‘Course not._

He let out a deep breath. _Okay, Zayn, what can we use as a giant shoe?_ He looked over at the spider, it was still crushing things and knocking everything over. _I can’t crush it from the top, but maybe I can crush it against a building_ he thought, looking around at the buildings and moving to find a correct angle _But I still need something to crush it with.. and I still need a way to crush it._

He looked around him nothing there is nothing there but cars _Just cars_ and then he smiled to himself _that’ll work._  He positioned himself at an angle from the spider were it would be between himself, and a building and picked the car that was closest to him, a yellow taxi, and began to cover it webbing from front to back. He created a net around it, and wrapped all of the strings together at the end, and dragged it a bit. _I’m going to need a bit of momentum_ and he let go of the net, running around to the cars closer to him, and pushing them very far out of the way, and going back to his taxi. He let out a deep breath. _Here goes nothing._ He held tight onto the end of the net, and started spinning himself in a circle. With every turn he kept himself locked on the spider, making sure he knew it if was moving out of range, but it seemed pretty preoccupied enough to not move very far. He continued to spin, going faster, and faster with each rotation, and, when he finally got the car to stay steadily off of the ground, he eyed the spider, positioned himself, and flung the car at it. His body flew forward a bit from tossing the car, but he watched it push the spider into the building behind it and effectively squish it.

He sighed a very big sigh, and then he heard reporters getting louder and louder. He lept into a nearby alley, and climbed up a building, using the tops of buildings as his means of getting home for the rest of the night, keeping himself inside of the shadows to avoid being noticed.

When he finally got home and took off his goggles his vision was splitting into four, and his sides were hurting. He fell onto his bed and passed out for the night.


	6. Chapter 6

Zayn awoke the next day with his head feeling fuzzy and the sound of the news blaring loudly through the house. He picked himself up from his bed and stumbled downstairs, hoping to ask his parents to turn down the television, but he couldn’t get a word in before his dad took him under his arm and turned him toward it.

“Some guy took on a giant spider last night; decked out in converse nonetheless.” His dad was smiling.

“The goggles are what killed me, that and the kneepads. What was he doing before he happened upon the spider? Practicing parkour?” Waliyha said while walking into the living room.

Zayn gave a nervous smile

“Well whatever he was doing he saved lots of people.” his mother said.

And Zayn looked at the television where he saw several replays of him being first thrown down by the spider and then crushing it. His eyes went wild at the sight of all of it.

“The question on all of our minds is who is this Spider-man? How did he know how to stop the spider? Where did the spider even come from?” The news anchor asked.

“Well if there’s a small spider you crush it with a shoe. It’s the same principle.” Zayn said aloud.

“Exactly. It wouldn’t be that hard to figure out.” His dad said, motioning for Zayn to sit down on the couch.

“They’re making the boy sound malicious.” Zayn’s mom added.

“Well he was equipped with webbing and he did go to the spider to kill it before the navy could get there. It’s not a far fetched to think that he had something to do with it.” His dad said, Zayn felt sheepish

“Well if he did cause it he still stopped it. Maybe he messes with spiders a lot and didn’t mean for it to get so big...” Waliyha said

“Or he had nothing to do with it and he just went by to help stop it.” Zayn said “That could be the case.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t seem very plausible considering everything else that happened.” Safaa said, coming into the living room and sitting on Zayn’s lap “The television is awfully loud for it to be nine in the morning” and she grabbed the remote and turned it down a bit just as another report came onto the screen.

“I think this so called Spider-man is bad news, and if it were up to me he’d be in cuffs right now.”

“Well we knew Jameson was going to make the worst of this.” Zayn’s dad said “He’s always blabbering off about something.”

“Jameson’s bored and has nothing better to do.” Zayn said, a bit defensively and he took the remote from Safaa and turned to cartoons “I think that’s enough Spider-man business for our family this morning”

“This is all anyone’s going to be talking about for the next week.” Waliyha said with a sigh “Do you think they’ll put out a search for him?”

“A search?” Zayn asked, his eyes big

“Probably not. They couldn’t find him after the thing happened... I don’t think he really wants to be found.” Zayn’s mom said “Hopefully they'll just leave him alone.”

“Hopefully...” Zayn said moving Safaa to the side and getting up from the couch. “I’m gonna go sleep for a bit more I’m still tired.” and he went back up into his room and and slept for a bit trying to shake off the weirdness of the morning.

 

He awoke to a light knock on his door and it slowly creaking open, pushed by none other than Harry. Zayn sat up in his bed and gestured for Harry to sit down next to him, still a bit tired from the night before. Harry crawled into bed behind him and leaned his chin on Zayn’s shoulder.

 

“Hear all the commotion about a spider-man today?”

Zayn sighed “Yea. Family woke me up with it today.”

“Don't you think it’s the least bit cool? I’d think you’d be interested in it what with your genetic engineering internship and all”

“Well I am... I’m just really tired from last night.”

“Really?” and Harry snuggled his face closer to Zayn’s and kissed him on the cheek.

Zayn smiled softly “Yea, really.”

“It’s almost 4pm I don’t think sleeping that late is healthy.”

“Are you serious?” Zayn shot up straight. “I don’t even remember what time I went to bed...”

“Was it some time around 8am, because then your sleeping habits would be perfectly understandable.”

“No it was definitely before two...” Zayn was confused. He loved to sleep in, no doubt, but for over 12 hours was a stretch even for him, but he still felt drained. His powers generally helped him to feel better, not sluggish.

“You’ve been asleep for over 12 hours and you’re still tired?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do last night? Are you stepping out on me, Malik?”

Zayn scoffed “Sure, Harry. That’s what it was.”

“Well there are few things that would make a person so tired.”

“Mhm.” Zayn nodded, throwing away the idea and flopping over onto his back laying across Harry’s legs _I guess fighting giant spiders tires a person out_

“Seriously, why are you so tired?” Harry said, prodding him in the side causing him to elicit a tiny laugh

Zayn swatted his hands away “I was working out a lot last night... I guess I’m still tired.”

“Ah are you working out to look as good as your model boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend, eh?”

Harry’s eyes widened “Or you know, not? One step below boyfriend?”

Zayn smiled “Sure. You’re my one-step-below-boyfriend.”

“Are we in a one-step-below-relationship.”  
“I think so. Sorry you’re stuck with me.”

Harry nodded “Wow I guess I’ve gotta try my best to get rid of you.” and smiled.

 

The next day at the BioCenter, Niall still wasn’t back from his trip, and Zayn was feeling a bit anxious from only being there with Yuchun. She was nice, but having Niall there always made him feel a bit easy with Doctor Bianco, and though he hadn’t found any information last night, he still felt weird around him. He came into their station that day without saying a word and left in the same silence. They were getting deeper into genetics of animals and harnessing them by now, and Zayn had become an expert at repairing cells and binding different parts together. Some died, some remained in a stasis state and didn’t split, and some actually thrived. It was all trial and error, and in the name of science, and he was happy to be making progress within the field.

Professor Vemp kept walking in and out of their station room to talk to the other scientists, who all seemed to be in a frenzy whispering about spiders. She seemed more annoyed and worried than actually interested in what was going on. After about five times of walking in and out of the room she came back in and huffed out an angry breath.

“Yuchun, Zayn, do you two have anything to do with the spider incident that happened this weekend?”

Yuchun seemed appalled and confused “No. We haven’t even been working on spiders much.”

Zayn shook his head “No. I had nothing to do with it. Why would we we’re only kids?”

Professor Vemp, in an agitated voice started “The technology behind the spiders was linked to the BioCenter's research on genetically engineered spiders. There’s a huge investigation going on and since the Horans are out of town until tomorrow, the investors are in charge. They think that since this didn’t happen until the internship started, that we should end it.”

“End the internship?” now Zayn sounded appalled

“The other Professors and I are fighting right now, but the board wants verification that none of you had anything to do with it. It’s ridiculous, actually. You guys know nothing about the tech behind that spider. If they want to do an investigation they should start with the highest members who actually have clearance on those types of experiments.” she sat down “Smartest people in the world and they can’t even figure out how to investigate properly.”

“Well, isn’t Doctor Bianco the head of the department that deals with spiders? Why is no one asking him questions?” Yuchun asked

“Well, he’s currently advocating for keeping the program. The only real people who can decide whether or not it stops is the Horans, but their word can be overrode by an overwhelming vote from the board.

Her room beeped, and she sighed before going back out to talk to the other scientists again. Zayn and Yuchun waited in silence for her to return.

 

When she came back she looked a bit exasperated with three tiny tubes that contained exactly one q-tip. “They want to do a DNA test to see if it matches anything found at the site.”

“What?” said Zayn, nervously

“They’re going to do everyone in the entire building, and everyone in the program.”  
“Did the spider have human DNA? How does this make sense?”

“Doctor Bianco offered it and it’s currently the only way that the board will actually let us keep the program. I’m positive the Horans will want to keep it but we’re facing an override right now. The investors want the company to look clean, and this is a way to completely clear our name.”

 

Zayn was frantic, but there was no way he could get out of this.

Professor Vemp placed one tube into Yuchun and Zayn’s hands and kept one.

“Do you guys just keep these on hand at all times?” Yuchun asked looking at the tubes

“You’d be surprised how often these come in handy.” Professor Vemp said

“Now, all you have to do is swab your mouth with the cotton and place it into the tube.” She demonstrated for them, and then they both followed suit, and gave them to her.

 

Handing over the tube was like handing over his soul. Zayn felt his throat clasp up, and his hands go clammy, he wanted to cry.

“Are those going right down for testing?” He asked

“No, I’m keeping them for a few hours. I just wanted to get it over with now instead of the end of the day.”

They went back to their research uninterrupted for the rest of the day, but Zayn felt nervous and afraid the entire time. He knew that the moment they looked at his DNA he’d be rounded up and put into a cage as a human experiment. Before he left he tried to talk to Professor Vemp, but he figured that would only make the process quicker and so he went home, upset, and stayed in his room until morning.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to itsallaboutzarry, 404sandheartache, PhirideuAnsari, and Charlotte for commenting ( i hope that was everyone since last time!!!)  
> Thank you to Sahana zlasses for letting me use her as a character and Keni mclaheyed for beta-ing!

Zayn heard his phone ringing and picked it up to see that it was 4am, and from an unknown number. So, he ignored it, because he was pissed, and scared. He’d just saved the fucking city and now he was sure he’d become the most infamous prisoner of it. He ignored the call, and turned himself back over in his bed. His phone rang again immediately after, same number, and he sighed, ignored it again, and rolled over. After a minute or so, and when Zayn was getting used to the silence, again his phone began ringing again from the same number and he sighed, defeated, and answered it grumpily.

“It’s four in the morning and I don’t know who you are so this had better be worth it.”

“Zayn, this is Professor Vemp.” Her voice and high and quick, and he tensed up. Had they already gotten the results back? Doesn’t DNA testing take about two days or something?

“Zayn I think you should come down to the BioCenter as soon as possible.” She said, her voice stern though she still seemed a bit alarmed.

“Why? Now?”

“Yes, now. I can’t-” and she lowered her voice “I’d rather talk to you in person and I need to speak with you immediately.”

“I can’t just walk out of my house. It’s 4 in the morning.”

She kept her voice low. “Zayn, I’m trying to keep you safe. I need you to meet me at the BioCenter as soon as you can... preferably right now. Do you think there’s anyway you could make it?”

There was something about her voice in that last sentence, something about the way she stressed her words that made him think she knew about his extra form of transportation.

“Could you tell me what this is about?”

“Again, I need to talk to you in person.”

“...I’ll be there soon.”

 

And he got up and put on some clothes, opened his window and tried to make his way toward the BioCenter as discretely as possible. He noticed that his sides were hurting again. Not anything major, but it felt like growing pains. He wondered if he was gaining even more muscle mass, which honestly wouldn’t surprise him; he seemed to be gaining more powers as time went on.

When he neared the BioCenter he lowered himself to the ground and began walking. He felt a strange tingling sensation in the back of his head when he was about two blocks away and turned around to view Professor Vemp in her car motioning for him to come to her. When he neared her car she greeted him with a nervous smile and said

“You may want to get in.” she ducked her head down into the car and Zayn for the life of him could not find a rational reason to actually get into the car. She could be trying to kill him, she could be trying to kidnap him and harness his powers for evil or scientific notoriety. In the end, though, he did get into the car, and closed the door behind him.

“So before I handed off your DNA, I took a look at it. Is there something you want to tell me, Zayn?”

“Not really, no. Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

 

She sighed

“Okay, I’m sorry for doing this but you need to understand this, Zayn. If other people find out, you’re going to be taken away from your friends and your family and we may never see you again.”

 

Zayn pinched his index and thumb over the bridge of his nose and furrowed his brows together

“I know. I know, but I can’t make it go away I can’t-” he felt his throat closing and his voice got a little higher “ It’s too late they’ve already gotten the sample, haven’t they?”

Professor Vemp patted him lightly on the shoulder.

“Of course not. I know what’ll happen to you. I’d never let them do that, but I have to give them a sample of DNA, and it has to look like yours. I was going to ask you if you could somehow get a sample from your father.”

 

Zayn relaxed, his body shifting to turn toward Professor Vemp and a little tear trailing down his face

“You didn’t tell anyone?”

“No, and I don’t particularly plan to. I do think that you need monitoring of course, because we don’t know how this will affect you... your body could be decaying as we speak, but I’ll be damned if I subject you to that type of scientific experimentation ...I’d never be able to live with myself if I did.”

 

He leaned over towards her and pulled her into a big hug, sniffling a bit in the process

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Though, I do hope you were telling the truth when you said you had nothing to do with the giant spider being unleashed? How did this happen to you?”

“No, I didn’t... well I squished it if that counts, but I didn’t create it... I went on a field trip to the BioCenter one day. Lads knocked me into the spider habitat-thingy and one of them bit me. Next thing I know I’m strong as ever and jumping high in the air and crawling on walls... I... took the internship at the BioCenter to investigate to see why this happened to me...”

“I’m beginning to wonder the same thing... something isn’t right here. You’re infused with random spider DNA and then some giant spider just shows up? Around the same time that there are obvious excuses being made for cutting the internship program...” she closed her eyes and let out a deep breath

“We need to focus on getting you some DNA that we can switch out. I’ve already burned yours, and if they don’t have it they’re going to remove you from the program and open an investigation.”

“You burned it? You’re a bit more hardcore than you seem, Prof.” she smiled

“I’m a rebel, Mister Malik. Never forget it. Now, what are we going to do?”

“Um my dad wakes up at” and he pulled out his phone “...now. I don’t know how I could get it from him but I think I can?”

“I’ve brought a cotton swab for you... the same ones that we have at the BioCenter in case yours were any different. I can drive you home.”

“If you could drive me home why not just meet me at my house in the first place?”

“Well, I don’t know where you live, Zayn.”

“Oh.”

 

and he gave her his address information and showed her how to get there. She stopped about a five houses away and he walked back to his house and climbed into his bedroom saying to himself _You know if I were a bit older I think Professor Vemp would fancy me._

His thoughts were cut short by the realization that his little sister was sitting on his bed, and had just seen him climb into his room. His face dropped.

“Safaa...” and she looked up at him

“I heard your phone ringing a lot this morning... I don’t think anyone esle heard it, though. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

“You didn’t tell?”

“No. I figured you were out helping people.” She smiled

“Helping people, Safaa?”

and she let her teeth show and her eyes twinkle up at him at she whispered “I figured it out, Zayn. You’re the spider-man.”

 

He creeped over to her, a daunting look on his face.

“How did you know?”

“Well, you’re generally very excited about superheroes but you wanted everyone to change the channel when it was on tv, and you’ve been out a lot lately playing in the old junkyard, and I was in your room a bit and I found some spray cans that have webbing in them...”

“How often do you go into my room when I’m not here?”

“Often... but not for bad purposes it’s mainly because everyone leaves me alone... child prodigy and all.”

“You would be the only baby sister in the history of the world to figure this out.”

“Doniyah would have figured it out had she not been away, and if this was Waliyha she never would’ve been figured out.”

“Why didn’t I get to be the smart one in the family?”

“‘Cause you’re the boy.” Safaa laughed “Were you helping people today?”

“No, actually... I was talking to Professor Vemp... some other people might find out about me. I need to get some of Dad’s DNA to switch with my own.” and he took out the cotton swabs that Professor Vemp had given him.

“I can help with that.” she said and she took the cotton swabs from his hand, left his room for a moment, and then came back and handed one of them to him. “I told him it was for an experiment.”

“Only little kids get to do stuff like that, you know.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m still little.” she smiled she pulled her onto his lap and gave her a hug.

“Thank you.” he got up and placed the swab into a little tube “We’ll... talk more about this after school, yea?”

“Yes!” she jumped up a bit “I’m excited” and smiled, sitting back down on his bed and he smiled back at her, climbing out of the window to hand off the DNA sample to Professor Vemp.

 

When he got back into the car he took a deep breath and handed the sample over to Professor Vemp.

 

“What made you look at my DNA anyway?” he asked her, hoping that this wouldn’t be one of those things that backfired on him. He didn’t see her burn his DNA, he had no proof that this was why she wants his dad’s DNA, she could’ve been talking to other scientists about it while he was in his house for all he knew.

 

“When you left yesterday... you just looked like you needed help. I thought maybe you did have something to do with the giant spider and was trying to cover yourself up, but then I looked and saw all of the abnormalities in your coding...”

“Okay. Thank you.” Zayn said as he left the car. It wasn’t definitive, but he’d take it. He really didn’t have a choice.

 

Later, back at school he founded himself calmed by Niall’s presence as they walked down the hallway.

“How was your trip?”

“It was great. Parents slept a lot and so did I. So, naturally, we all loved it.”

“Good! Next time you’re leaving please give me at least two days notice.”

“I’ll try. I heard about the spider-man everyone’s been talking about. Did you see what happened?”

“Only on tv. It was cool how he took out that gross spider with the car.”

“Yea! I saw it on tv, too! They think it’s got something to do with my parents, though...”

“So I’ve been informed.”

 

The easiness of this conversation only helped him to feel better. He could relax about everything for a while, and he didn’t really have to think because he knew all of the answers.

 

“Not worried, though. Nothing happens at the BioCenter without them knowing about it.”

 

He wondered if Niall’s parents had set up the whole thing with Professor Vemp to keep him safe. It was plausible, and the idea made him feel more protected; he knew the Horans would never let anything bad happen to him.

“Good.” is the response that he settled on before his arm was being tugged on. He stopped, but Niall kept on walking to class

“Zayn!” he turned around see a girl with flowing dark hair and a familiar face staring up at him. “I was wondering if you’d be free to sing at the spring concert? I’m short a male soloist and of course if you don’t want to I can find someone else, but I was wondering if maybe you could?”

He sighed, he’d actually love to sing with her, but he knew everything was too demanding right now.

“Sorry, Femme. I’m just a bit too busy right now. Thanks for asking me, though. It’s nice to know someone thinks I can sing.” he blushed a bit

“You’ve got a lovely voice, Zayn! Never forget that! Thank you anyway!” and she started off down the hallway, her presence soon replace by someone’s warm body against his back, leaning their head on his shoulder.

“Femme chatting you up I see.”

He leaned his head back to meet his cheek with Harry’s

“Nah. She just needs a voice for the spring concert.” and Harry lifted up and Zayn turned around to look at him. Harry’s eyes practically had hearts in them, which he couldn’t quite complain about because his heart was close to bursting out of his chest. “I’d love to, us brown kids have to stick together and all, but I couldn’t commit.” he sighed as Harry tilted down slightly and pecked his lips. They started down the hallway again and Harry locked their fingers together. It was a bit weird but only because he could practically feel Niall and Louis going on about it in the future... not to mention getting a few looks from some of the people at school.

“Maybe she should try asking Liam. He’s got a good voice.”

“Maybe.”

“I was wondering if there was one thing you’d want to commit to, though.”

“Ah. Does this have to with the newfound hand holding?”

“A bit.” Harry let out a nervous laugh “Would you like to be my date for Prom?”

Zayn stopped them in the middle of the hallway

“Tux, and all hair all slicked back, silly dancing, and hotel after parties? That Prom?”

Zayn about died. He was sure that this was something that only happened to people in movies, but it was happening to him. Of course he wanted to go to Prom with Harry, it was only in his wildest underclassman dreams that he thought he’d ever have the chance.

“Yes, that Prom, I think. Unless you’ve already gotten yourself a date. I know lots of people who’d love to go with you.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” Zayn said “but they’d all be disappointed... I’d really only want to go with you.”

Harry smiled at him “Good, cause I’d really only want to go with you.”

  
And they started off back down the hallway. Zayn wasn’t really sure where they were going anymore.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thank you to beautyindisguise, charlotte (♥) and adecutegirlz for commentings!  
> And as always thank you to Keni for beta-ing and gregjamesbond, louweetolinson, and zlasses for letting me use them as characters!
> 
> also i'm too sleepy to proofread this a second time so if there are any typos I'm sorry!!!

As it turns out, Safaa had some pretty good ideas for the whole spider-man thing. Zayn had been helping people out of coincidence, but she’d told him that it’d be better if he did more helping on purpose. That way everyone would know that he was a good guy.

“Safaa, where did you get a police scanner?”

“Ebay.”

“Ebay?”

“You seem surprised.”

“I am? What other shenanigans do you get up to when no one is paying attention?”

“None! I only got it for you. I’m good.”

“Okay, I believe you.”

 

He flopped down onto his bed with her, sitting the scanner down between them.

 

“What do you want me to do with this thing?”

“Listen to it.”

“And then what, Safaa?”

She let out an annoyed huff

“Listen to it. Go to the reported crimes in the city and stop them.”

“I’m not even dressed.”

“That’s something else we should talk about.”

“My clothes, Safaa?” and he sat up on the bed looking at her.

“Your costume. I think we should change it.”

“To what?”

“Hold on.”

 

Safaa got off of his bed and left the room. She came back a few minutes later holding a large sheet of rolled up white paper in her hands, lifting herself onto the bed, and sitting across from him once again. She moved the scanner out of the way and laid the paper onto the bed, opening it up in the process.

 

“I think this could be our project together!” on the paper was an entirely new costume.

It was one piece, and on the paper she’d scribbled _stretchy material_. He had to admit that it was much cooler than his. It was all black from head to mid-calf with red web-like designs all over it and a big spider on his chest. His face was completely covered except for what he made out to be two slits for breathing, and shiny rounded triangle-like shapes over his eyes. From the mid-calf down she had designed what he thought to be red boots. He sat up.

 

“Okay, what is all this? You’ve gotta explain it to me.”

“Okay well there’s four pieces, but three components. The head part comes off and the boots are separate. Inside the bottom of the boots there’s a thick layer of rubber covered by a bit of cloth and cotton. This way they can be flexible, but you don’t have to worry about getting anything into your feet.”

“Practical.”

“Right!”

"The cloth is made out of this material.” She pointed to the corner of the page “It’s in swedish so I can’t read it, but it’s very thick and also very stretchy. It won’t rip, but it’s available here, too! I went online and found a vendor! There’ll also be a thin layer of fleece in it to keep you warm during the winter!” she smiled up at him when she said that as if she was especially proud of herself for thinking it up. “Except on the calfs ‘cause they’ll be covered up twice by the boots. See” and she pointed to the calfs on the paper “the rest of the costume actually extends all the way down there. Being warm is important but if you’re moving a lot you don’t want to get too hot. The top part” she pointed to his head “doesn’t have any fleece, either. The eyes are tinted plastic so that you can see out of them, but no one can see you, and so that your eyes will be protected.” she pointed to his wrists “There’s a tiny hole under here that lets out the nozzle of your webshooters. See?”she looked up at him and he nodded in response. “And your gloves are fingerless so that you can still climb on stuff. The costume is thin enough to wear under your clothes but I think we’d have to make at least three so that you have a rotation of them. I’ll clean them in secret when mum’s done doing laundry so that she doesn’t catch you.”

“This is really good, Safaa.”

“Thank you!” she smiled at him

“So, when do you propose we get started with this?”

“Well, first.” and she stood up on his bed and motioned for him to get off of it. “I’ve got to take your measurements and estimate how much fabric we’ll need.”

 

She took a tiny tape measure out of her pocket

“Prepared I see.”

“Always.” and she gestured for him to spread his arms. She tried to hold the tape measure across his wingspan, but her arms were much too small. In the end she just had him hold it in both hands for her while she wrote the number down on the paper. The same went for her trying to measure him from head to toe. He smiled and held the tape measure atop his head while she climbed down from the bed and read the number near his foot, going back on the bed to write it down.

“Sometimes I forget how tiny you are.”

“It’s because I’m so smart.” she smiled at him and continued using him to help her with measurements.

When they were done she’d scribbled numbers all over the paper and added them up for fabric sizes to order. She sat in Zayn’s lap with his laptop on her lap going to the websites and showing him what to order.

 

“So, in the mean time you need to save some people to show them that you’re good.”

“Right, that’s what the scanner is for, but I can’t do it until after school.”

“I know, but I think you’ve been practicing enough to stop some bad guys. Especially after stopping the spider. You have to do it on days that you’re not at the BioCenter, too, but not every day or people there will get suspicious.”

“Do you have a plan for that, too?”

“Yes!”

He smiled, sighing “Alright, let’s hear it.”

“Well, I think you should stop two crimes a week for now. Then people will know who you are without you causing too much commotion or leaving a large trail behind yourself. You should switch the days each week. We’d have to set up a calendar. That way people won’t be able to guess your schedule.”

“You really have thought of everything.”

“I tried to.”

 

So, while they were waiting for the materials to be delivered they’d set upt wo days for Zayn to help people, and he did. His first one was a jewelry store robbery. He left the criminals tied up in a web over the store. He was caught by a security camera, and ended up all over the news. He went to school the next day to see that everyone was talking about him, again.

 

“This guy stops a giant spider and we’re all worried that he’s done it himself, and then he stops a robbery. I think he’s brilliant.” Louis said at lunch, “He’s like a proper superhero with super powers and everything.”

“He’s only done two things I don’t know if we should call him a proper super hero yet, Lou.” Zayn said sheepishly from across the table.

“Two’s a lot! That’s more than any of us have done, and I mean who knows? He could have helped loads of other people and just not gotten caught by any cameras. I’ve heard loads of reports that people have seen him.”

“You can’t believe everything you read, Louis.” Yuchun said, leaning on Niall’s shoulder. At this point it was pretty clear that Niall’s plan to get closer to her at the BioCenter was working. “I’m a bit skeptical, but it is very exciting. I do think his costume is shit, though.”

“Maybe that’s all he could come up with.” Zayn said a bit defensively. His embarrassment came from her comment and remembering that his baby sister had come up with a better costume than he had.

“That would be unfortunate.” Yuchun said. Zayn sighed

“Maybe we should change the subject? People have been talking about Spider-man all day.”

“That’s because he’s the most exciting thing to happen since Tony Stark.” Louis said “Do you think he’s rich like him?”

 

Zayn made a face that said _I wouldn’t know_ and Louis looked over to Niall.

“Niall, would your parents happen to know any billionaires who want to become superheroes?”

“I think if they’re hanging out with my folks then they could probably afford a better costume.”

 _Well, thanks, guys_ Zayn thought.

“I think it’s a cool costume.” Harry said, scooting in next to Zayn. “It’s practical and kinda rugged. It kinda reminds me of something Zayn might think up.”

“Are you saying I’d come up with something ugly?”

“No I’m saying you’d come up with something that made sense and looked kinda cool.”

“Well thanks, love.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I think I might actually get sick from secondhand fondness.” Louis said looking at them.

“Oh please if I had a dollar for every time you and Angel took a study break to makeout I’d be as rich as Niall.” Zayn replied

“Maybe like half as rich as I am just saying.”

Zayn gave him a dead look “Thanks, Niall.”

“Just saying. It’s still pretty rich.”

“Right.” Zayn said “Whatever. You’re still gross.”

“And we’re still cute.” Harry added, kissing Zayn on the cheek.

 

As it turns out, putting the suit together with Safaa was a bit harder than expected. She wanted everything to be perfect, and Zayn didn’t want to let her down. By the end of it he was sure that if college or Spider-Man didn’t work out for him, he could easily get a job as a seamstress.

It’d taken them about three weeks to finish including waiting for the supplies to get there, and when they were done he still couldn’t wear it because Safaa insisted that he not do so until he had at least three to go in rotation. He agreed, waiting patiently for approval as he realized that this was probably more exciting for her than for him.

Safaa was a little girl, a genius who knew all about the properties of space and time and could probably teach a class or two at his school. In so many ways she was grown up, and practical, and rational about everything. With this, though, she got to be a kid. She got to believe in something amazing and irrational and sorta magical. Not to mention that it was her big brother who she was helping to save these people. He got to give a little bit of his powers, a little bit of his own magic to her. Saving people was wonderful and felt great, but it didn’t compare to what he saw emerge from Safaa.

So, he didn’t mind when she told him to reinforce some stitching, or redraw patterns or even when she just didn’t let him do anything. The suit was going to be cool to him either way, but he wanted it to be perfect for her, and it was. When the first one was finished she immediately made him try it on and smiled big when he walked through the door.

“What do you think?”

“It’s perfect!”

“You think so?” he walked over to his mirror and made different poses in front of it.

“Yes. Is it too hot? It’s it too stiff? Can you shoot webs from it? Can you stick to stuff? Can you see?”

Zayn did a few awkward poses and jumped up on his ceiling, sticking himself to it. Then he stuck his arm out and shot a glob of webbing at the mirror

“Looks like it, and I can see just fine.”

“Good! You’ll be able to wear it once we finish the other two! But wait I’ve got a surprise!”

and she disappeared into the bathroom, coming back with her own little spider costume. Except hers had no hood, and she had a cape, and her color scheme was red and blue instead of red and black.

Zayn lowered himself from the ceiling and walked over to her, picking her up

“You are so cute.” she giggled

“I’m your home-based sidekick.”

“True. You are the brains behind the operation.” and she smiled.

 

He walked them over to the mirror holding her on his hip. “We are quite a pair aren’t we?”

“Yes! Spider-man and Spider-girl! Plus I won’t have to get a halloween costume for next year.”

Zayn laughed “Yes, that’s very practical of you, Safaa.”

 

Zayn had started letting Professor Vemp monitor his progress. She was constantly checking his cell structure for change and constantly noted that they were _evolving at an alarmingly fast rate_  which he didn’t actually know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. He felt much more safe now since the investigation was over and everything had checked out with his dad’s DNA. He’d become so much more active in his Spider-man realm that she was clipping out articles of him and posting them up with the change of his cells on a calendar.

“That way we can match the cells' changes with your abilities.” she said which again Zayn didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing.

 

“But I still don’t understand what this has to do with the BioCenter...” she said one morning when she had him come over to her apartment. She had her own lab inside of it which Zayn thought was extremely cool. She didn’t want anyone at the BioCenter to know what was going on. So, this was the best place to do her research. She motioned for him to look at his cells under her microscope when she lifted up from it, going to write something down on paper.

“I’m at as big of a loss as you are, and you’re right they do look more... spider-y than last time.”

“Exactly. They should get to a place of stasis... especially by now. It’s worrying me. Have you noticed anything weird going on with your powers?”

“Not anything except that they get better like every day, see?” and he jumped up from the chair and stuck himself to her ceiling. “Two weeks ago that took effort.”

“Interesting. I see you’ve been a bit busy around the city.”

“I don’t want people to think I’m a bad guy... and I like saving people.”

“Well, alright. You focus on saving people, and I’ll focus on saving you. Do you think you could do some investigating of Doctor Bianco for me?”

“I already have. Before... I went into his computer files and I couldn’t find anything but old military files.”

“Old military files?”

“Yea. You know like the stuff that you find of him online... maybe a bit different but just you know military plans and strategies. I figured it was stuff from school or something.”

“Where did you find that?”

“In his computer at the BioCenter.”

“The BioCenter?”

Zayn got nervous “...Yes. I know it seems bad but I was only investigating I wasn’t getting up to anything.”

She stood up from her chair. “No, this isn’t about you. Our computers at the BioCenter are supposed to be used for strictly scientific purposes.” she began pacing around the room. “There should be no military files on his computer unless he explicitly authorized them... and even then he wouldn’t be able to put the files on there. He’d have to get them from an authorized military source because they’d have to be cleared for scientific use by that base.”

“Bases... there was like lots of stuff from different countries? He’s got lots of connections all over the world.”

“Oh my god, Zayn.” she turned to look at him and grabbed his shoulders “He’s trying to weaponize you.”

“What?”

“You.” she lightly touched the sides of his face and motioned for him to stand up. “People like you. He’s trying to turn you into a weapon to sell to armed forces around the world.”

“That wouldn’t make any sense he can’t sell me I just would fight and it’s not like they can force me I’m stronger than them.”

“That must have been what the spider was about.” she sat down at her computer “They were trying to create a drone person that just listens to them and it must have backfired in some way.”

“So, what are we supposed to do? How is he going to get these people?”

“I... I don’t know yet.” she turned back around to view him “But I’m going to think of something, and we’ll stop him. We’ve just got to lay low for a while and figure everything out. He obviously doesn’t have it all correct or we wouldn’t have had the spider mishap.”

“So, I killed a person and not a spider? Is that what you’re saying?” he sunk down on the floor and pulled his knees into his chest.

“Zayn...” and he laid his forehead onto his knees.

“Zayn.”she got out of her chair and crawled over to him and rubbed his hair “The person was gone by the time you got to it.”

He looked up at her with tears streaming down his face “But it could’ve been scared instead of angry. That could’ve been me.”

She wiped his tears off with her sleeve “But it wasn’t, and it wasn’t your fault, okay?”

“What if it happens again and I have to kill another one?” His voice was still high and he was still crying “I can’t kill a person... I can’t do that.”

“Then. I’ll start working on an antidote based on your DNA right now, okay? And we will stop Bianco so that this doesn’t happen to anyone else, alright?” He nodded. “Don’t be angry at yourself. Be angry at him for making you do it.” He nodded again, wiping the rest of the tears from his face. “Hug?” he made a tiny smile at her and leaned his body onto hers for a hug, still sniffling.

“We’ll end this. I promise.”

 

And just like that, with the reality of the situation looming over his head, Zayn wasn’t sure about this anymore. He couldn’t kill people. He wasn’t even dealing with killing a mutated  spider-person very well. What if he’d known the person? What if they’d known? What if they were still cognizant while it was happening? What if that had been him?

He went home that day, tired from attempting to socialize with people after the news and went to sleep seeing double. He couldn’t take any superhero-ing that night as happy as he knew it made Safaa. He just wanted to sleep, and grieve, and think up ways to take down Doctor Bianco.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to kittiesinthetardis, sara, and beautyindisguise for commenting!! And thanks to everyone for reading so far!

The first time Zayn wore his new costume he couldn’t even get into it. It had been almost two months since he talked to Professor Vemp about Doctor Bianco, and he was, admittedly, still shaken up by it. He found himself avoiding everything that had to do with it which meant he was slacking on his Spider-Man duties. He’d drastically cut back on the small amount of hero work he was already doing. This in combination with his new costume had caused people to start speculating his death which he wasn’t exactly upset about it. If they thought he was dead he didn’t really have to go back. It wasn’t really his job to save people, and he still needed to recover after finding out he’d technically killed a person.

He’d thrown himself into his friends and his schoolwork. Though he was never actually lacking in either area he wanted that to be the only focus for the time being. He’d already helped Niall pass two more tests with flying colors, and they were all talking about the six of them going to Prom together.

“No Liam will be joining us, I hope?” Louis said one day to Harry when they were all studying in Niall’s room

Harry was curled in a ball on the floor using Zayn’s thighs as a pillow as he read.

“No. I think he and Femme are going out now. He’s been talking to her a lot outside of the singing thing. I think he fancies her quite a bit so he’s probably asked her to go.”

“Everyone’s falling in love, I see.”

“Good so he won’t be picking with me for the rest of the year, then?”

“Zayn I think that ship sailed when you fucked up his arm.” Niall said peering up from his book with Yuchun sitting in his lap.

“Yea, well either way I’m glad the bloke is happy.”

“And off of your back.” Niall said

“Yea, that too.”

Zayn also found himself avoiding Safaa, which he was starting to feel increasingly guilty about. Instead of Harry coming over to his house he’d go over to his. Which was honestly a better idea as Harry’s parents were never home and his sister was away at medical school.

 

“They go on a lot of business trips now...” Harry said one night while Zayn was laying on him and his hands were idly playing in his hair.

“Do they?”

“Yea... They were okay with me liking girls, and were a bit upset when I told them I liked boys and then... got confused when I told them I just didn’t care... and they started taking a lot of business trips out of town.”

“When did you tell them?”

“They found out around the end of middle school, but Gemma was still here with me then. She’s gone now, too.”

“Only off to Uni, Harry.”  
“I know... I just don’t like being here by myself so much. Models don’t go to uni in case you didn’t know.”

“I’ll visit you... or you’ll visit me. I’m staying in New York for school anyway.”

Harry laughed “That’s good. That means you plan on still liking me a year from now.”

“I’ve liked you for over 10 years now so I don’t think you really have to worry about longevity.”

“Right.” and Harry brought their faces together and kissed him “you could’ve told me.”

“There was a huge amount of time where you wanted nothing to do with me, Styles.”

“I was a punk ass kid you should’ve punched me and asked me to Homecoming.” he kissed him again.

“I don’t think that’s how those things work, Harry.”

Harry kissed him again “Why not?”

“Punching doesn’t usually help people come together. Kisses, though... they seem to get the job done.”

 

Harry seemed to go completely pliant whenever they were like this. His eyes would flutter shut and his body would respond to every touch Zayn made. Sometimes he let out tiny giggles when they were kissing or his mouth would simply gape open while Zayn was sucking on his neck like his brain was overloading and he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. He’d placed his hands under Zayn’s shirt slowly pushing it up and Zayn finally just lifted it off and threw it onto the floor and went back to kissing him. Harry, in turn, hooked his legs around Zayn’s waist and wrapped his arms around him, squeezing Zayn as close to him as possible without hurting him. He was already only in his underwear as he didn’t feel the need to wear real clothes in his own house which Zayn thought was kind of ridiculous, but he didn’t really complain about it.

 

Harry parted his lips from Zayn’s “Can we--” he gave him one more quick peck “I mean, have you ever?”

“Um, no. I haven’t” Zayn let out nervously.

"With anyone?"

"No I've... _never_."

“Do you want to?” Harry looked up at him with a soft expression.

“Yea? ...yes.”

Harry smiled, and slowly pushed Zayn onto his back.

“Don’t worry I’ll take care of you.” Harry said as he kissed Zayns lips, his jaw, his neck, trailing kisses all down his chest and torso and licking at the skin at the very bottom of his abdomen before pulling his pants off of him. He tossed them onto the floor and reached over into the drawer of his bedside table, taking a few things out and setting them on the bed before kissing Zayn once again

“Are you sure you’re okay with everything?”

“Yea.” Zayn smiled at him “I’m fine. I promise.”

 

Harry reached his hand down and played with the elastic on Zayn’s boxers before pulling them all the way off. Zayn let out a deep breath as he felt Harry place his tongue flat against the base of his dick and slowly lick upward to the tip. He wasn’t hard yet, but he felt like that wasn’t going to be an issue soon. Harry took his dick in his hand and swirled his tongue around the tip before lowering his whole mouth down over it and stroking his hand in time with the bobbing of his head. Zayn was panting through his nose with his eyes shut biting his lip. He began letting out even pants that turned into tiny moans when he felt Harry drawing patterns on his dick with his tongue. He felt himself grow hard in Harry’s mouth, and that’s when he stopped, Zayn was actually thankful for the loss of contact; he felt like Harry was running him ragged.

 

Harry grabbed the container of lube from the bed, flipped open the cap and coated his fingers with it. He put the container down and went to rub Zayn’s thigh

“Try to relax, okay?”

“Okay.” Zayn said, and Harry slowly pushed his middle finger inside of Zayn.

“Is that okay?”

“Yea, it’s fine.” Zayn was still, his body was a bit tired, and he was waiting on this to actually feel like something.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not really? ...It just feels like there’s a finger in my bum.” Harry laughed

“Okay just tell me if it gets uncomfortable.”

He slowly moved his finger in and out of Zayn slightly curling it, tugging on his dick as a temporary distraction. Zayn didn’t notice that it actually felt good until he propped himself up on his arms to look down at Harry, noticing that he was only using his fingers, and Zayn was moving his hips to get more contact.

“Is another finger okay?”

“God, yes.” Zayn let his head hang back and Harry slowed down again, inserting the second finger slowly and leaving it there for a moment to let Zayn adjust to the difference, and pulling it out with just as much drag, and then slowly pushing them back in.

“Is that okay?”

“Yea, just let me” and Zayn wiggled his hips a bit to change the angle a little and told Harry to continue.

He didn’t know exactly what he did differently this time, and the fit was still a bit tight, but Harry’s fingers were doing something that made his body go completely limp and he plopped back down on the bed gripping the sheets under him. He felt Harry kissing his inner thighs and let out tiny whimpers in between his breaths. It was too much, and Zayn couldn’t take it all right now.

“Wait, stop I-”

Harry quickly removed his fingers and lifted himself up to Zayn

“Did I hurt you?”

“No, no I just.” and Zayn kissed him, placing his hands on Harry’s waist and pulling him down towards him. Harry was soft, and steady while Zayn was frantic below him. Running his hands all over Harry’s back and sides and catching his breath while Harry placed light kisses across his jaw. He let himself calm down, the tension from before leaving his body

“We can go on now I was just... “

 

Harry had curled himself around Zayn, and placed his face into the crook of his neck cuddling Zayn back into a state of comfort. Zayn leaned into him, running his fingers through his hair.

“I just needed a break.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yea.” and Harry went back down between Zayn’s legs, sticking his two fingers back in which Zayn had already become used to. He grabbed the container of lube once more and squirted a little on his fingers before asking Zayn if he could put one more in. Zayn agreed, lifting one of his legs up to give Harry a bit more access. Harry was still reserved when pushing the third finger in, and Zayn knew why. He had to get comfortable with each addition before he could enjoy anything, and Harry was trying his best to make sure that Zayn was comfortable. When he knew that he was he went a little faster, half-rotating his wrist to spread him open evenly, and of course this was a third new feeling for Zayn and he liked it a lot. He arched his back and moved his hips in sync with Harry and letting out deep huffs of air.

“Okay I... I think I’m ready.” Zayn finally let out. Harry looked up at him

“I’d agree.” and he removed his fingers from inside of Zayn, picked up a plug off of the bed, and put lube on it, replacing his fingers with it while he pulled off his underwear and put on a condom, coating himself with lube.

 

He brought his face up to Zayn’s and kissed his cheek.

“Are you sure?”

Zayn nodded “Mhm. Yea, I’m sure.” he lifted his head up and kissed Harry “...I’m glad it’s you and not some... random person at a college party like I thought it’d be...” and Harry kissed him and smiled

“Me, too.”

He reached his arm down to remove the plug and pulled Zayn over onto his side so that they were facing each other. He hooked Zayn’s leg around his waist and pushed himself inside drawing in a sharp breath. Zayn was focusing on keeping himself relaxed, the stretch hurt a bit but not as much as he’d imagined. Harry took his time being still waiting for Zayn to get used to the stretch and the angle, though, Zayn could tell by the how uneven his breath was that this was a lot for him.

“Is this alright?” His voice was low, and gritty and Zayn loved it.

“Just let me” and he shifted a bit of his weight onto Harry so that he was on top of him a little.

“Don’t move yet, Harry.” and Harry nodded looking up at him. Zayn moved his hips in even thrusts; being in control helped him to relax more. Harry was digging his fingers into Zayn’s hips trying to keep still. He moved himself a further down on Harry’s dick so that it hit his prostate and then “Yea, fuck. You can move now.”

Harry pulled Zayn closer and buried his face inside his neck and began to fuck up into him. Zayn rested his cheek on Harry’s head leaving his mouth open wide and squoze his eyes shut as he felt the sensation of Harry fucking him, Harry biting his neck and his shoulders, Harry sucking on his skin, Harry’s hands splayed across his body trying to pull their bodies even closer together while listening to the little _Zayn_ s he heard escape from his mouth.

Harry’s strokes were long, and even. He seemed to be overtaken by the intimacy of it all. Zayn on the other hand was completely aware of everything. Every sound, every touch, every thrust registered in his mind. He wanted to remember it, he wanted to keep it from all running together in a blur of sweat and sex. That would’ve been college, not this. He kissed Harry’s hair.

“Hey.” he panted out. “Let me see you.” and Harry looked up at him. His eyes had glazed over a little and his fringe was plastered to his face with sweat and Zayn couldn’t help but kiss him, pushing his tongue into his mouth and massaging Harry’s with it. Harry grabbed his hand and locked their fingers together moaning into Zayn’s mouth. His thrusts became faster and more uneven.

“Not yet, Harry. I want to-” he stopped him, and with a sharp intake of break lifted himself off of Harry’s dick. He pushed him onto his back.

Harry was, again, plaint. Letting Zayn follow his own pattern of trailing kisses down his body before removing the condom and taking Harry in his mouth. Harry moved his hands down into Zayn’s hair, and he stopped, went up to him and kissed his lips

“No hands, okay?” Harry nodded, and placed his hands behind his back. Zayn kissed his neck and went back down between his legs. He licked the tip of Harry’s dick before taking it back into his mouth, thrusting his hand at the base. He looked up at Harry as he pushed himself lower, and lower until his lips were at the base and his eyes fluttered closed for a minute. He could feel Harry’s dick at the back of his throat and it felt good, and as great as getting fucked felt, hearing Harry moan from that felt even better.

He decided  to continuously do that; reaching the base with his mouth, drawing patterns with his tongue on the way down, and sucking as hard as he could on the way up until he felt Harry’s hips buck up and cum fill his mouth. Harry’s body went limp under him but his arms reached out for contact. He pulled Zayn up to him and grabbed his hips, pulling him even further still, placing a pillow behind his neck and opening his mouth.

His grabbed Zayn’s hips, and pulled them towards his face taking Zayn into his mouth until he was in his throat. He held it there for a while then took himself off, fisting a hand over Zayn’s dick and looking up at him with encouraging eyes. Zayn looked down at him, holding onto the headboard and biting his lip. He was so close, and he could tell that Harry knew. He lifted his other hand up and stuck a finger inside Zayn, thrusting it just a few times and that was it. Zayn came panting hard, looking down at Harry as he smeared some of the cum across his lips, lapped up the rest with his tongue, and then licked his lips.

Zayn settled himself back down onto Harry, kissing him frantically. Harry was relaxed, leaning into Zayn’s every move and touch. He let out one deep breath before holding his face nose-to-nose in front of Zayn’s and smiling. Zayn fluttered his eyelashes against Harry’s and kissed the corner of his mouth.

“That was fucking filthy.”

“I know. Did you like it?”

“Yea.” he kissed him again, and Harry trailed his fingertips up and down Zayn’s back.

“I told you I’d take care of you.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Keni and Kim wewerestars for helping me! And to Zarry, sara, beautyindisguise, and kittiesinthetardis for your comments! I greatly appreciate the feedback! And thank you to everyone who is still reading!

Zayn went home that night feeling a lot happier, and a little heavier. He’d just lost his virginity to the boy of his dreams and while he felt comfortable with it, the reality of it was still setting in. When he got into his room he just laid down on his bed looking at the ceiling, trying his best to remember every touch, every kiss, every sound, every movement. He almost wished they'd taped it so that he could remember everything. He was still very aware of everything around him; his skin still prickly, his eyes still focused. He could hear nervous, light knocking on his door and almost didn’t want to ask what it was about.

It was Safaa, and her face was kind of sad, and he knew why. He rolled over onto his side and gestured for her to come over to his bed. She complied, walking over slowly and lifting herself up onto the bed with him, and placing her hand on his cheek

“You’re not going to bed Spider-Man anymore are you?”

He sighed “...It’s not really that simple, Safaa.”

“Some people think you’re dead.”

“They think Spider-Man is dead.”

“That’s you, and you haven’t tried to tell anyone otherwise.”

“I’ve been preoccupied...”

“With Harry?”

He sat up “This isn’t about Harry, Safaa. This is about me.”

“Then why don’t you want to be Spider-Man anymore?”

“Because it... involved some things that I’m not sure I want to get mixed up in...”

“Like what?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“If you can’t talk to me about it then who are you going to talk to?”

He drew his knees up to his chest and looked at her “This doesn’t have anything to do with you or Harry or anyone it’s me... I can’t anymore, Safaa... I’m sorry.”

 

She leaned her head against his legs “You know it was really cool that your were Spider-Man because it felt like I was Oracle and you were Batman, and... I felt a lot safer knowing you were protecting the city... I don’t know what happened, but I know my big brother, and I know you’d never do anything to hurt anyone... and I know the city needs you. I know because I saw so many people who weren’t afraid to go out at night, or to turn the corner, or to let their children walk home from school... You didn’t just save people... you made them brave, Zayn... you made me brave, and I don’t think you should stop that over some mistake that you made... no matter how big you think it is.”

 

“It’s not--”

“ _No matter how big you think it is_ , Zayn.”

 

She left the room in silence and Zayn fell asleep like that, sitting up in his bed resting his head on his knees, trying to make sense of what his sister had just told him.

 

The next day, before putting on his clothes, he put his suit on _Just in case_ , he thought, _but no promises._

 

He didn’t even remember what he was supposed to be doing in school before, he just remembered he’d never skipped class  that year and Harry was sneaking him into the library, pulling him behind a bookshelf, and putting his hands under his shirt. Harry was trying his best not to laugh between kisses and Zayn was attempting to use his mouth to shush him

“This is how people get expelled.” Zayn whispered while Harry sucked on his neck, not exactly trying to stop him, just making a statement.

“The librarian never comes back here.” Harry whispered back “I promise.”

“I’m skipping class.”

“So am I.”

“What if we get caught?”

Harry stroked Zayn cheek with his thumb “We won’t.” and Zayn pulled Harry closer and continued kissing him, but he felt an intense pain at his sides, and crouched over a bit. His breathing hitched.

“Zayn, are you okay?” Harry asked, standing over him

“Yea, I think I just--” and he was cut off. More pain at his sides and he crouched down even more, breathing hard

“Zayn?” Harry’s voice has high and frantic and Zayn could tell that he didn’t know what to do.

Zayn dropped down on the floor, propping himself up in his knees, and grabbing at his sides. I squoze his eyes shut, and keep breathing through his nostrils.

“I don’t know what’s happening, Harry.” Harry bent over and rubbed his back

“What is it what’s wrong?”

“It just--” and he felt another wave of pain at his sides, his eyes were watering from it. “It hurts. I don’t.”

and he felt one more wave of pain before everything went black around him. He could faintly hear Harry calling for help, and his body giving out, but it was the last thing he remembered.

 

He woke up in Professor Vemp’s office of all places, with large strips of cloth wrapped around his torso. His vision was blurry for a while but when it returned he found Safaa sitting next to him.

“Safaa, how did you get here?” his voice was raspy

“I called Professor Vemp after we got a call from your school.”

“Where was mum? She just let you come here?”

“I answered her phone for her... She doesn’t really know that you’re here. She just knows that you got sick at school, and she thinks I’m napping in my room so you’re gonna have to sneak me in later.”

“How did I get here?”

“I called Professor Vemp after I talked to your school nurse... We asked Niall to tell them that his driver was bringing you home so that she could pick you up.”

“I told Niall that something may have happened at the lab that caused you to faint, and that it’d be better for you to come with me. He listened.” Professor Vemp interjected. “Do you remember what happened?”

“I... was...” _kissing Harry_ he thought “in the library and my sides started hurting... a lot. They’ve hurt before, but they started hurting a lot for no reason.”

“Right.” she took a slide from a microscope, and brought it over to him. “remember how I said we needed an antidote for the people being turned into spiders?”

“...Yes.”

She walked over to him, and lightly touched the side of his torso.

“Zayn your body is trying to grow extra arms.”

“ _Extra arms?_ ”

“Yes... you are... morphing into a spider. I don’t think it’s to the extent of the other people, and it’s not happening as quickly, but you are.”

“What am I going to do?”

“I’m going to make you an antidote I’m still working on one for the other people, but we need to stop this... Soon.”

“How?”

“In your absence as Spider-Man I did a bit of digging. We just need to reveal Doctor Bianco to the board and to the world... which will be soon.”

“What about an antidote?”

“I’m working on that as fast as I can, Zayn.”

“How long do I have until they’ve like proper grown in?”

“I don’t know... but I don’t think they’ll be visible for about another month... like Wisdom Teeth... it hurts because they’re growing in...”

“I’m only 18 I haven’t had my Wisdom Teeth come in yet. I don’t know how that’s going to feel.”

“Hopefully we can stop it before they come in.”

“Do you think that’ll happen before or after Prom?”

“I can’t say, but it’ll be around that time... but I do think I’ll have the antidote finished before then.”

“What happens if I change before the antidote is finished?”

“...I don’t really know, sweetie.”

 

Zayn was numb. In addition to the slight dizziness he was getting over from recovering from the fainting, he felt hopeless. He couldn’t actually do anything about his impending and unwanted species change, and there’s no telling what would happen to him if he actually did change. He believed that Professor Vemp could get the antidote done, but he didn’t know how long that would take, and it worried him.

Professor Vemp drove he and Safaa home. He climbed up to his room with Safaa on his back and slowly lowered her into her window, then went into his house through the front door. His mom and dad were a bit fussy about him, but he told them he’d rather just go upstairs to his room and watch television.

Harry came over a little while later to check on him. He let Zayn lay his head in his lap, and stroked his hair until he fell asleep.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to keni mclaheyed and kim wewerestars for helping me finish!!

Zayn was back. He was angry about his circumstances and turning into a giant fucking spider, and somehow, knowing that he might not be able to help himself caused him to work even harder to help everyone else. He knew that the next time his sides hurt he’d probably just faint the first time from the pain, so he was paying very close attention to his body while he fighting criminals, but he was still gaining powers so everything was getting easier. The criminals he was taking down all seemed to be nothing in comparison to the spider he’d battled. Jewelry store robbers, muggers, arsonists some had guns, and some were strong, and some were really quick, but he could beat them all, so he was never particularly scared of losing, he was mostly scared of passing out during a fight and then being killed.

With this, he became more banter-y with whoever he was fighting. It helped him to be distracted by making witty quips at them instead of just focusing on what could happen. It also helped him get everything done quicker. When they focused on what he was saying instead of what he was doing they could be disarmed easier which he was thankful for; the less time it took for him to fight them, the less the chance of him fainting in front of them, and the higher chance of him staying alive.

The suit did help. It was more professional, and people seemed to take him seriously with it on. He took himself seriously. He felt more like a super hero with it on than ever before. Though, there were still rumors of his death swirling because of the new suit, he tried his best to quiet them, he didn’t want anyone to think he’d given up on saving the city, not anymore.

Over the course of the few weeks leading up to Prom, the internship had ended for the semester, though the BioCenter promised to bring it back over the summer. Zayn had officially become a published scientist in a scholarly journal which is why he thought his acceptance letters to school were all pouring in so fast.

 

“It could be the fact that you have a 4.0 grade point average, and are graduating at the top of our class.” Louis said, looking at his acceptance letters with Zayn and trying to figure out which school they’d attend together.

“A 3.4 isn’t too bad, either, Louis. You’ve practically gotten into every school I’ve gotten into except the _really_ hard ones...and my gpa could go down we haven’t even had finals yet.”

“Please, if anyone’s GPA is going down it’s mine, which I don’t think it will... Niall’s is gonna go up thanks to you, and we can go to separate schools, we could just stay in New York...”

“Nah... the harder schools have shit art programs, and only focus on science and math. I’d die if I couldn’t do a proper minor in art... maybe even a double major.”

Louis smiled. “Good to know you’re okay with dealing with me for at least the next four years.”

“Not just you, we’ve got to factor Niall in, too.”

“I know. Are we all just going to stay in New York?”

“I think so. Angel’s already got her sight set on Columbia, but that’s still here, and I think Niall’s told me that Yuchun wants to go there for Pre Med, too.”

“And Harry’s staying here for modeling.”

“When did we all get to the point where we consider significant others?” Louis asked.

“I think the day Niall signed up for the internship.”

“Well, we’ll all still stay in touch, that’s good.”

“You me and Niall are gonna room together I think that’s a bit more than staying in touch.”

Louis nudged him “You know what I mean. It’s just a bit scary you know? Graduating and all...”

“We’ve got the whole summer before we go to college. Let’s focus on just Prom for now... and picking a school that all three of us want to go to.”

“Fine.” and they went back to looking through their acceptance letters.

 

The weeks leading up to Prom seemed to blur together. He was picking out a Tux to wear with Harry, and shoes, and Niall was going to pick them all up in his limo, but they had to choose a house to have all of their families take pictures of them at (which again everyone agreed Niall’s would be best) and they had to figure out all of the  logistics. In addition to Zayn picking up crime fighting every day, and every time that he wasn’t busy, because he wanted everyone to know he was there and wasn’t leaving. Professor Vemp was still clipping out articles of him fighting crime, and working on an antidote, and he was worried, but he tried to stay positive.

 

“You are a proper super hero now, Zayn.” Professor Vemp said to him one day. She was drawing his blood to try to isolate the accelerating cells and stop them.

“I’m trying my best... It’s getting easier.”

“I see.” Professor Vemp always seemed to talk to him with a bit of comfort and calculation. She was always listening to what he was saying and applying it to their current situation. If he said he did a cool jump today, she was connecting it to his transformation, if he said he was really tired after fighting someone, she was connecting it to his cells breaking down, but she still genuinely cared. She was still trying to treat him like he wasn’t a science experiment, and he appreciated that.

“Yea, like fighting is easier, my stamina is getting better.”

“That’s good... for crime fighting.”

“Not so good for me though, eh?”

“Not really sure...” She took his sample and placed it under a microscope. “I need you to do something may be very dangerous...”

“Which is?”

“I think I’ve found Doctor Bianco’s secret lab somewhere under the BioCenter... I need you to break into it and try to find the formula for the genetically engineered spiders.”

“Tonight.”

she sighed “Yes, tonight. It’s so hard for me to reverse engineer what I don’t know what engineered in the first place.”

“Okay.”

“Tonight, we’re all having a staff dinner to commemorate the internship. It’ll go on for three hours at the Guilded Lily.”

“That’s where we’re having our Prom”

“Yep! Now, he’s going to be there. So, you have three hours to break in and find the information.”

“How do I get in?”

“I’m going to give you a key so that you can get into the basement. After you’re down there, keep looking around for a tunnel... keep close watch on the time, and look out for security cameras... I recommend staying on the ceiling.”

“Okay, got it. What time does the party start?”

“At 7, and scientists are not fashionably late. So, you should have the full three hours, and it’s not like he’s getting dressed from his lab.”

“Got it.”

“And kids have been disappearing.” she got up from her chair and pulled out some articles “I doubt they’d be there, but if you see them then try to help... but most importantly please be careful. I’d never be able to forgive myself if you were captured, too.”

“I will be.”

 

That night Zayn put on his suit and set out for the BioCenter. He entered the basement through the back entrance, and crawled along the ceiling looking for a pathway to the lab. For a while he was going in circles, and didn’t was beginning to think that Professor Vemp had it wrong, but then he found a tunnel in the basement that just stretched on instead of leading to heat tanks and gas valves. He followed the pathway onto what seemed to be a wall, but when he dropped down in front of it and pushed it opened. _This is like straight out of a murder mystery book, I swear_ he thought, and hopped back onto the ceiling, crawling into the room.

There was definitely a lab there, and he definitely knew it had some information in it, but he didn’t know where it would be. It wasn’t like the labs upstairs. It was dark, and there were no security cameras. In fact, there was very little technology in it at all, there was even a chalkboard covered up in symbols, and writing. Nothing there directly tied it to Doctor Bianco, but he figured either way this was probably the person who was doing all of this. He looked around in drawers which he found nothing but notebooks and papers and drawings or formulas scribbled on them. He looked all around the little lab for some info, and didn’t find anything until he forced a locked drawer open, and saw a book with a spider on it.

The book had about five sheets in it in all, but they were all completely filled front and back. He took out his phone, and took clear pictures of each page before putting the notebook back into the drawer and closing it. He looked around for more information, but didn’t see anything of interest. He hoped that what he’d gotten pictures of could help Professor Vemp, and then he left. The only trace that he’d been there was the opened drawer. He crawled back up and out of the basement, and made his way home to show everything to Safaa.

 

“I’ve been snooping tonight.” He said when she came into his room. He was taking out his phone’s usb cord, and connecting it to his laptop.

“Professor Vemp told me about it. Did you find anything?”

“I think I may have.” and he plopped down onto his bed, and she followed him, scooting over onto his lap, and looking at the pictures with him.

“That looks like an address.” she pointed to the screen. “Where is that?”

He opened up another tab, and searched the address on Google.

“It’s an abandoned warehouse...” He looked at it from street view “No lights, no nothing. No one going in or out.. it’s just empty.”

“Why would he have it, then?”

“I don’t know, Safaa.. you’re the genius here.” He smiled at her.

“I’ll figure it out, then.” she smiled and they went on to the next picture. “This all looks like information for spider cells.” he kept clicking until they got to the 7th page where Safaa noticed something. “That looks like a formula.” she pointed to the screen again “See?”

“Yea, I see.”

“You should show that to Professor Vemp.”

“Good. I will.” and he felt a bit more hopeful. Now that he saw some sort of formula for it, he felt like it could actually be reversed.

He showed the pictures to Professor Vemp the next day, and pointed out the formula to her. Which she agreed, was probably the correct formula. She even noticed some consistencies in her own hypothesis.

“I can definitely reverse this.” she said while looking at the pictures.

“It may not be done for a few days, but I can do it.”

“Will it be done in time for Prom? I’d rather not pass out there...”

“...maybe right _before_ Prom? I can try my best, but I can’t make any promises. This requires that the antidote sits for a couple of days.”

“Okay.. I can deal with that.”

“I said about a month before... I know June is almost here, but I think I can finish it before they grow in... have you been feeling any pain lately?”

“Not really.”

“That’s a good sign. I think you may have one more fainting spell before they actually start growing in. The pain is just your body prepping you for them... I think we’ve still got time. Don’t worry.”

He sighed “Okay. I’ll try not to.”

 

He left her apartment to meet with Louis, Niall, Angel, Yuchun, and Harry to study for finals.

“We still haven’t settled on where we’re going to go for school.” Niall said, frowning at the Chemistry textbook.

“I think I have!” Zay said, he was laying completely on top of Harry’s back and scrolling through some college website on his laptop. “There’s one called Empire State University.”

“Did we all apply there?” Louis asked

“Yes, we did.” Zayn replied. “I think it’s good. They’ve got dorms that are like triples... so all three of us can share a dorm together. All three of us got in, and they’ve got a great art program for me, and business program for Niall, and a good performing arts program for you, Lou. The main campus is only two hours away from Columbia.”

“Sounds good.” Niall said, “but my acceptance may be revoked after I fail this chemistry final.”

“You’ll do fine, Niall” Yuchun said taking his textbook from him and scribbling some notes down onto paper. He smiled at her.

“So, it’s settled. We’re going to Empire State University.” Louis said

“It sounds very official.” Angel said after him.

“Not as official as Columbia.” he replied, and she smiled at him.

“And it’s only 45 minutes away from my house.” Zayn whispered into Harry’s ear. “So you’ll be able to visit a lot if you want.”

Harry nodded “Good. I was worried you’d chosen somewhere as far away from me as possible.”

“Definitely not.” Zayn said

 

And just like that, their futures seemed to be locked away. Zayn was more nervous about how he’d hide being Spider-Man from his best mates more than he was about college and finals not going well, but he knew he could do it. All he had to worry about now was Prom.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has helped and read! Thanks to everyone who ha left kudos and comments. I appreciate everything!

It was Prom night, and Zayn was fixing his bowtie in a mirror with Harry who was trying to tie his tie. They were both dressed in black suits with grey vests underneath and pastel green dress shirts. Zayn’s bowtie was pale green and grey plaid, and Harry’s tie was a matching pale green and plaid. They both wore heart shaped silver cufflinks. Zayn’s hair was slicked back, while Harry swooped his curls to the side so that they framed his face. They were matching in a subtle, and obvious way. If you saw them together you’d know they were matching, but if one wandered away they’d look like like they’d come alone.

“Niall, are the girls on their way?” Zayn asked, straightening out his suit in the mirror. All of the boys were getting dressed at Niall’s. His room was genuinely big enough to fit at least twenty people in comfortably and Niall had a full length mirror in his room in addition to having an entire wall that was a mirror in his walk-in closet. Niall and Louis were in the closet fixing their shoes while Zayn and Harry were in the room looking into the full length mirror.

“I think so. Yuchun texted me a few minutes ago, but I haven’t looked at my phone.” Niall walked out of the closet. His hair was pulled back into a quiff held together with some shiny product he’d put in it. He was wearing a grey 3 piece suit, and a yellow shirt. His bowtie was grey, but his pocket square was also yellow

“You look like a proper gentleman, Niall.” Zayn said smiling at him.

“Thanks! You two look cute.” Zayn blushed

“We tried.”

When Louis walked out he was wearing a black suit with white pinstripes, a black vest underneath, and a white shirt. His tie was striped black, and white, and he had his hair slicked back into a quiff like Niall, except his wasn’t as shiny.

“Nice, Louis.” Harry said

“Thanks. Not too bad yourself.” and Niall’s phone rang, and he went over to answer it.

“That was Yuchun, she and Angel will be pulling up really soon with their families. We should head downstairs now.”

 

They all took deep breaths, and went downstairs. Niall’s house was filled with relatives from all four families. All of Zayn’s sisters were there including Doniyah, and his parents. Louis’ mom and sisters were all there. Niall’s parents had invited his aunts and uncles over, and Harry’s older sister Gemma had even showed up to see him off to Prom.

There was so much hustle downstairs and all of the boys took pictures together, and individually before the girls showed up, and they went outside to take pictures in front of the house.

Yuchun was wearing a flowing bright yellow dress with an empire waist and gold detail, while Angel was wearing a form-fitting white dress. it gathered at the bottom in light wisps and the back had a long train. Zayn thought she looked like an actual angel.

“Is this what a photoshoot feels like?” Zayn asked Harry

“No, this is more like walking the red carpet, actually.” Harry giggled

All six of them took group pictures, and then they split off as couples, and then did more individuals. Their families were all so excited, and there were smiles and cries and so many hugs before they actually got into the limo and drove off toward the Guilded Lily.

 

They all entered Prom in one, giggly group. They stayed close to one another until they found a place to sit down. Niall went over to the buffet first, but as soon as Harry caught sound of a song that he knew he grabbed Zayn’s hand and pulled him up to dance.

“We’re at Prom!” Harry said holding onto Zayn’s hips and dancing happily in front of him

“Someone’s excited.” Zayn laughed

“Yes! We’re at Prom we’ll never get to do this again! Aren’t you excited?”

“I am” Zayn smiled, and kissed him “Excited to be here... especially with you.”

 

They danced for a bit longer before they felt a large quake. Harry’s grip tightened on Zayn, and he pulled him closer.

“Was that an Earthquake?” He asked

“This... is New York I don’t know what one of those-” and he was cut off by another quake, it felt closer than the one before. He pulled Harry closer to him, and began to look around for the rest of his friends.

“We need to-” he was cut off again by another quake that felt even closer “Something’s coming.” he pulled Harry of of the dance floor and called for Niall and Louis. No one was panicking yet, and their Prom seemed to be at a stand still, but Zayn knew he had to get his friends out of there, he could feel something getting ready to go wrong.

Niall and Louis ran over to him with Angel and Yuchun close behind.

“We need to get out of here.” Angel whispered “Something is wrong and whatever is causing that shaking is getting closer to us.”

“I know.” Zayn said. “We should all just calmly go toward the exit or else it’ll become very crowded and we’ll never get out.”

The quaking began to become more fluid, and heavy. As if whatever was causing it wasn’t taking slow individual steps anymore.

They all stood up, and tried to walk over to the exit, but the thing that was causing the shaking was getting closer. They were all stumbling across the floor trying their best to walk, but they couldn’t. Before they knew it they were all falling on the floor, and the lights and props that were all hung up were crashing down onto the floor, too. There were a few screams from inside the room, and people were trying to walk quickly across the floor but no one was actually going anywhere. All six of them were clumped up together behind the ice sculpture.

Then, everything was silent for a moment. They all looked around to each other waiting for something else to happen when they heard a loud crunch, and looked up. The ceiling was being torn off of the building by a giant, mechanical spider.

It flung the chunk of ceiling away from the building, and began to reach in a grab students. They all stayed low, but Zayn knew if they sat in one place they’d be caught.

“We need to make a break for it, okay? While it’s distracted and doesn’t notice us. On three?” They all nodded, and Zayn began to count

“One, two, three!” and they all ran from behind the ice sculpture. Everyone holding hands with their date. They were so close to actually getting out when Zayn felt his arm being lifted up behind him. He looked back and saw that Harry was being lifted up by the spider, which was pulling him up too.

“NO!” Zayn yelled. _“NO!”_

He tried to pull Harry back down to him, but the spider just flung him off. He flew into the air and landed in the parking lot on top of a car. When he looked up the spider was jumping into the river, swimming away.

 

He lifted himself up and off of the car, trying to remove his Tux in the process. He was crying, and his body hurt from the crash, but he was going to save Harry no matter what.

When he finally got himself into his costume, he took out his phone to call his mom.

“Mum, can you please put Safaa on the phone?”

His mother seemed alarmed so he figured the news had spread “Are you okay?”

“Yes, mum, I’m fine. Can I please talk to Safaa? It’s important.” He figured if anyone were to see him right now he’d look ridiculous; spider-man in full costume talking on a cell phone asking to speak to his little sister. She agreed and let him talk to Safaa.

“I need you to tell me the address of the abandoned warehouse that we saw on the pictures. Do you remember it, Safaa?”

“Yes, I do. It’s 425 Laken Drive.”

“Thank you.”

“Zayn,” her voice got lower “Are you going to stop it?”

“I’m going to try to stop all of this... I’ll see you soon.”

 

He hung up and made his way toward the abandoned Warehouse.

When he got there everything was dark. He kept himself on the ceiling and crawled around to find something that looked like the secret door he’d found in the basement, but he didn’t find anything until he stood on the floor. When the pressure of his feet set onto the floor a path lit up to a stairwell. He followed it down into the basement of the warehouse to another lab.

This one was different. It was all lit up with red and green lights. There were beakers filled with chemicals all over the counters. There were computers and tablets, and the giant mechanical spider was over in the corner, and even further in the back there were pods. He walked a little closer to them to see that there were people inside of them, one person per pod, all set up with tubes stuck in their arms. They were all asleep, and all from his graduating class. He saw Liam and Femme, and looked around for Harry.

 

“I knew you’d be here sooner or later.”Zayn turned around to view Doctor Bianco, and a few guards with him. “After all, your powers originated from me, didn’t they, Spider-Man?”

“I’m not going to let you do this to anyone else.”

“Oh, is that right? And you’re going to stop me?”

Zayn was a bit nervous “Yes. I am.”

“No. This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to capture you, and synthesize your DNA sequencing to inject into all of these children. Then, I’m going to enhance it just a bit more so that they’re incoherent, and set a few of them free in the city. Once the world sees how they work I’ll be paid billions by militaries around the world. They’ll be the world’s new super soldier, and all I have to do is press one button.”

 

He held up a remote, and before Zayn could do anything, the guards were surrounding him, and Doctor Bianco was escaping up the stairs. He knew he could easily beat them he just didn’t want to be distracted from Doctor Bianco. He jumped up onto the ceiling and jumped down onto one of the guards, and knocked him out. Then, he picked up him and used his body to throw at another guard. The last one he just punched out, and went back upstairs to find Doctor Bianco.

 

“I won’t let you get away with this.”

“I don’t need you to let me. I will.” and he turned around with another, more advanced remote in his hands. The spider from downstairs crashed up from the floor and pulled him down. He screamed, and fought his way out of the spider’s grasp, and jumped through the floor back upstairs, tackling Doctor Bianco as quickly as he could, and shuffling to get the remotes from his hands.

Doctor Bianco knocked him off, and Zayn flipped over onto his feet.

“You can’t beat me in a fight. You might as well give up.”

“Did you forget I created you?” And Doctor Bianco pulled out a wad of random things wrapped together it smelled like citrus and peppermint, and vinegar and Zayn didn’t know why, but he had the overwhelming desire to run away. He backed away from Doctor Bianco in fear. He didn’t know why he was reacting this way, but he couldn’t stop his body from instinctively backing away.

 

“What is that?”

“A little spider repellent. Keeps you away. You may be mostly human now, but the spider coding has been slowly taking over your body, and soon you’ll be nothing but a slave to its natural instincts.”

 _I can fight this_ Zayn thought to himself, and he took a deep breath. He felt himself backing away as Doctor Bianco grew closer to him. _If I just get one hit in_  he steadied himself concentrating on Doctor Bianco’s head, _and stop trying to run away_ and he jumped onto the ceiling, ricocheting himself off of it to knock Doctor Bianco down. When he got up, the man was unconscious.

He ran downstairs to the pods and began to open them up. He got to Harry’s and pulled him out of the pod, but he felt his sides start to hurt again, and passed out on the floor.

 

When he woke up he was surrounded by police, and ambulances. Doctor Bianco was being carried away in handcuffs, mumbling incoherently about his empire being ruined. Professor Vemp was looking down at him holding Safaa on her hip. He felt his face and realized that he wasn’t wearing his mask anymore.

“Don’t worry.” Professor Vemp whispered into his ear. “We made it here first. Told them Spider-Man saved the kids, and then ran off.” He nodded and his mom and dad walked over to the ambulance that he was seated in, a bit frantic.

“Zayn” his dad said “I understand that you care for Harry, but you could’ve gotten yourself killed. You should have stayed at the Prom.”

Zayn sighed “Sorry, dad. That was pretty idiotic of me... where is he?”

“He’s over there.” Safaa gestured toward Harry in another ambulance. He was awake answering questions from someone who seemed like a reporter. His tie was loose, and his Tux was ripped, and his hair was messy, but he looked okay... he looked like he was going to be okay.

“And you need to drink this.” Professor Vemp said to him, handing him a tiny vial of blue liquid. “It’ll put you back to sleep for a while, though.” and he did, drinking the entire vial without anyone noticing, and immediately falling asleep.

 

When he woke up for the second time he was back at Niall’s house upstairs, with a note next to the bed.

 

 _Niall wanted to invite everyone to his house for a second Prom. You went to sleep at 10:13. You should check to see if everything still works or not._ \--Vemp.

 

According to his phone it was 10:43. He looked around the room to see if anyone else was in there with him. When he saw the he was alone, he jumped up onto the ceiling. He stuck, and he could still jump, but he noticed that he wasn’t as powerful as before. _So I’ll have to start training again._ he thought.

He got dressed, went downstairs, and was greeted by all of his friends. Niall was laughing loudly over the music, and dancing with Yuchun while Angel sat on Louis’ lap in the corner. Some of the students seemed to be trying to enjoy the night, a few other seemed obviously disturbed by what had happened, but they continued on. Holding onto their classmates and silently thanking all of the forces of the universe that everyone came out of it okay.

He looked around for Harry who was sitting in a corner, twiddling his thumbs. He walked over to him

“Hey, how’s your Prom going?” and Harry looked up at him, a smile immediately growing across his face.

“Better now.” he stood up and hugged Zayn

“Come here I want to show you something.” Zayn grabbed Harry’s hand and led him outside to Niall’s backyard where they were alone.

“It looks like Christmas lights.” Harry said

“Yea. Niall’s parents have this place sprayed with some chemical that attracts fireflies in the summer.”

“It’s really pretty.”

“I know. Niall and Louis and I used to come back here and catch them in jars, but I learned that it’s not really good to catch them. It’s better if you just let them come to you...” He looked over to Harry.

“Are you saying I’m a firefly?”

Zayn laughed. “I think so. I went to save you, and I’ll always save you, but I wouldn’t have gotten to save you had a never let you come to me.”

“You’re getting a bit too cheesy, Malik.”

“We kind of almost died to tonight I think it’s okay for me to be cheesy... Just look at the pretty lights, Harry.” and Harry laughed, and kissed him.

“I’ll gladly be your firefly, Zayn.”

  
The End


End file.
